UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
AT   LOS  ANGELES 


GIFT  OF 

L.    Campbell 


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COLLEGE  LIFE 

ESSAYS  REPRINTED  FROM 

"SCHOOL,  COLLEGE,   AND  CHARACTER" 

AND   "ROUTINE  AND  IDEALS" 

BY 

LE  BARON  RUSSELL  BRIGGS 

Dean  of  the  Faculty  of  Arts  and  Sciences 
Harvard  University 


BOSTON    NEW   YORK    CHICAGO 

HOUGHTON    MIFFLIN    COMPANY 

(3T(jc  fltoersitic  press*  €ambrib(jc 


(Cbc  C\incc*Fii»c  pre?* 

CAMBRIDGE  .  MASSACHUSETTS 
V   .   S   .   A 


y 


CONTENTS 

Introduction iii 

The  Transition  from  School  to  College       i 

The  Mistakes  of  College  Life     ....  23      ' 

College  Honor 63 

Routine  and  Ideals 89 


0- 

COPYRIGHT,    I90I    AND    1904,    BY    LK  BARON   RUSSELL    BRIGGS 
ALL   RIGHTS   RESERVED 


Education 
Library 

BH6c 

INTRODUCTION 

rt       This  volume  contains  two  essays  from 

h      School,  College,  and   Character  and   two 

^     addresses  from  Routine  and  Ideals.     It 

i      includes  those  parts  of  each  book  which 

the  editor  regards  as  suitable  for  college 

students  in  general,  and  excludes  those 

parts  which  chiefly  concern  parents,  ele- 

"V     mentary  and  secondary  schools,  or  stu- 

«*     dents  in  Harvard  College.     It  is,  there- 

|     fore,  a  small  collection  of  old  writings 

rj     newly  combined  for  a  special  purpose. 

If  I  were  rewriting  the  essay  on  Col- 
"■i     lege  Honor,  I  should  give  more  space  to 
the  apathy  of  many  students  regarding 
T£      their  debts  —  whether  their  debts  as  in-' 
dividuals  or  the  collective  debts  of  their 
U*     clubs.     I  might  also  give  more  space  to 
O     the  Honor  System,  about  which  my  feel- 
ing has  not  materially  changed.     I  still 
feel  that  the  system  ministers  to  a  mis- 
taken sensitiveness,   endangers  the  au- 


28o66i 


iv  INTRODUCTION 

thenticity  of  the  college  degree,  imposes 
on  the  conscientious  student  a  duty  he  is 
better  off  without,  and,  when  it  requires 
every  man  to  certify  that  he  has  received 
no  help,  defeats  in  great  part  its  own  end 
by  substituting  avowed  distrust  of  every- 
body for  distrust  of  the  few  and  protec- 
tion of  all.  Yet  I  believe,  with  eager- 
ness, that  a  college  officer  should,  for 
every  reason,  whether  of  fairness  or  of 
mere  policy,  accept  the  word  of  a  stu- 
dent so  long  as  he  can,  and  should  main- 
tain with  him  the  openest  relation  com- 
patible with  the  rights  of  others.  Nor  is 
this  belief  inconsistent  with  my  attitude 
toward  the  Honor  System. 

These  remarks  about  the  Honor  Sys- 
tem may  hint  at  the  justification  of  the 
editor  in  reprinting  the  essays  and  ad- 
dresses. Though  the  material  may  be 
old,  the  subjects  can  never  lose  their  fresh- 
ness so  long  as  youth  is  youth. 

L.  B.  R.  Briggs. 

Cambridge,  January,  191 3. 


THE  TRANSITION   FROM 
SCHOOL  TO   COLLEGE 

College  life  is  the  supreme  privilege  of 
youth.  Rich  men's  sons  from  private 
schools  may  take  it  carelessly,  as  some- 
thing to  enjoy  unearned,  like  their  own 
daily  bread;  yet  the  true  title  to  it  is  the 
title  earned  in  college  day  by  day.  The 
privilege  of  entering  college  admits  to 
the  privilege  of  deserving  college ;  col- 
lege life  belongs  to  the  great  things,  at 
once  joyous  and  solemn,  that  are  not  to 
be  entered  into  lightly. 

Now  the  things  that  are  not  to  be 
entered  into  lightly  (such  as  marriage 
and  the  ministry)  are  often  the  things 
that  men  enter  prepared  viciously  or  not 
prepared  at  all;  and  college  life  is  no 
exception.    "There   had  always  lain  a 


2      THE  TRANSITION   FROM 

pleasant  notion  at  the  back  of  his  head," 
says  Mr.  Kipling  of  Harvey  Cheyne's 
father,  who  had  left  the  boy  to  the  care 
of  a  useless  wife,  "  that  some  day,  when 
he  had  rounded  off  everything  and  the 
boy  had  left  college,  he  would  take  his 
son  to  his  heart  and  lead  him  into  his 
possessions.  Then  that  boy,  he  argued, 
as  busy  fathers  do,  would  instantly  be- 
come his  companion,  partner,  and  ally; 
and  there  would  follow  splendid  years 
of  great  works  carried  out  together,  — 
the  old  head  backing  the  young  fire." 
Such  fatal  gaps  in  calculation,  common 
with  preoccupied  fathers,  are  not  un- 
common with  teachers,  —  the  very  men 
whose  lifework  is  fitting  boys  for  life. 

To  prepare  a  boy  for  examinations 
that  admit  to  college  requires  skill,  but 
is  easy ;  to  prepare  a  boy  for  college  is 
a  problem  that  no  teacher  and  no  school 
has  ever  solved.  In  the  widest  sense,  the 
transition  from  school  to  college  is  almost 
coincident  with  the  transition  from  youth 


SCHOOL  TO   COLLEGE        3 

to  manhood,  —  often  a  time  when  the 
physical  being  is  excitable  and  ill  con- 
trolled, when  the  mind  suffers  from  the 
lassitude  of  rapid  bodily  growth,  and 
when  the  youth's  whole  conception  of 
his  relation  to  other  people  is  distorted 
by  conceit.  Sensitive  to  his  own  impor- 
tance, just  beginning  to  know  his  power 
for  good  or  evil,  he  is  shot  into  new  and 
exciting  surroundings,  —  out  of  a  disci- 
pline that  drove  and  held  him  with  whip 
and  rein  into  a  discipline  that  trusts  him 
to  see  the  road  and  to  travel  in  it.  If 
we  add  to  this  the  new  and  alluring  argu- 
ments for  vice  as  an  expression  of  fully 
developed  manhood,  we  have  some  no- 
tion of  the  struggle  in  which  a  boy  — 
away  from  home,  it  may  be,  for  the  first 
time  —  is  expected  to  conquer.  The 
best  school  is  the  school  that  best  pre- 
pares him  for  this  struggle ;  not  the 
school  that  guards  him  most  sternly  or 
most  tenderly,  nor  the  school  that  guards 
him  not  at  all,  but  the  school  that  stead- 


4      THE  TRANSITION   FROM 

ily  increases  his  responsibility,  and  as 
steadily  strengthens  him  to  meet  it.  The 
best  college  is  the  college  that  makes 
him  a  man. 

The  first  feeling  of  a  Freshman  is 
confusion;  the  next  is  often  a  strange 
elation  at  the  discovery  that  now  at  last 
his  elders  have  given  him  his  head.  "  I 
never  shall  forget,"  says  a  noted  preacher, 
"  how  I  felt  when  I  found  myself  a  Fresh- 
man,—  a  feeling  that  all  restraint  was 
gone,  and  that  I  might  go  to  the  Devil 
just  as  fast  as  I  pleased."  This  is  the 
transition  from  school  to  college. 

In  a  man's  life  there  must  be,  as  every- 
body knows,  a  perilous  time  of  going  out 
into  the  world  *  to  many  it  comes  at  the 
beginning  of  a  college  course;  to  many 
—  possibly  to  most  who  go  to  college  at 
all  —  it  has  already  come  at  school.  The 
larger  and  less  protected  boarding  school 
or  academy  is  constantly  threatened  with 
every  vice  known  to  a  college ;  the  clois- 
tered private  school  affords,  from  its  lack 


SCHOOL   TO   COLLEGE        5 

of  opportunity  for  some  vices,  peculiar 
temptation  to  others ;  the  day  school,  if 
in  or  near  a  large  city,  contains  boys  for 
whose  bad  habits,  not  yet  revealed,  their 
parents  by  and  by  will  hold  the  college 
responsible.  I  remember  a  group  of 
boys  going  daily  from  cultivated  homes 
to  an  excellent  school,  each  of  whom,  in 
college,  came  to  one  grief  or  another, 
and  each  of  whom,  I  am  convinced,  had 
made  straight  at  home  and  at  school  the 
way  to  that  grief.  The  transition  from 
school  to  college  was  merely  the  contin- 
uation in  a  larger  world  of  what  they 
had  begun  in  a  smaller. 

A  continuation  is  what  the  transition 
ought  to  be :  the  problem  is  how  to 
make  it  a  continuation  of  the  right  sort. 
"What  is  the  matter  with  your  col- 
lege %  "  says  a  teacher  who  cares  beyond 
all  else  for  the  moral  and  religious  wel- 
fare of  his  pupils.  "I  keep  my  boys 
for  years :  I  send  them  to  you  in  Sep- 
tember, and  by  Christmas  half  of  them 


6      THE  TRANSITION   FROM 

have  degenerated.  They  have  lost  punc- 
tuality ;  they  have  lost  application ;  they 
have  no  responsibility ;  and  some  of  them 
are  gone  to  the  bad."  "What  is  the 
matter  with  your  school,"  the  college 
retorts,  "that  in  half  a  dozen  years  it 
cannot  teach  a  boy  to  stand  up  three 
months  ?  College  is  the  world ;  fitting 
for  college  is  fitting  for  life :  what  is  the 
matter  with  your  school  ? "  He  who 
loses  his  ideals  loses  the  very  bloom  of 
life.  To  see  a  young  man's  ideals  rap- 
idly slipping  away,  while  his  face  grows 
coarser  and  coarser,  is  one  of  the  saddest 
sights  in  college  or  out  of  it.  What 
is  his  training  good  for,  if  it  has  not 
taught  him  the  folly,  the  misery,  and  the 
wrong  of  dabbling  in  evil?  If  he  must 
believe  that  no  man  is  wise  till  he  has 
come  to  know  the  resorts  of  gamblers 
and  harlots,  and  has  indulged  himself 
for  experience'  sake  in  a  little  gentle- 
manly vice,  can  he  not  put  off  the  ac- 
quaintance four  years  more,  by  the  end 


SCHOOL  TO   COLLEGE        7 

of  which  time  he  may  have  learned 
some  wiser  way  of  getting  wisdom? 
Besides,  in  the  course  of  those  four 
years  (and  the  chance  is  better  than 
even)  he  may  meet  some  girl  for  whose 
sake  he  will  be  glad  that  his  record  has 
been  clean.  Cannot  a  school  which 
closely  watches  its  boys  while  their 
characters  are  moulding  teach  them  to 
keep  their  heads  level  and  their  hearts 
true,  save  them  from  the  wrong  that 
never  can  be  righted,  send  them  to  col- 
lege and  through  college,  faulty  it  must 
be,  but  at  least  unstained*? 

The  main  object  of  school  and  college 
is  the  same,  —  to  establish  character,  and 
to  make  that  character  more  efficient 
through  knowledge ;  to  make  moral 
character  more  efficient  through  mental 
discipline.  In  the  transition  from  school 
to  college,  continuity  of  the  best  influ- 
ence, mental  and  moral,  is  the  thing 
most  needful.  Oddly  enough,  the  only 
continuity  worthy  of  the  name  is  often 


8      THE  TRANSITION   FROM 

(in  its  outward  aspect)  neither  mental 
nor  moral,  but  athletic.  An  athlete  is 
watched  at  school  as  an  athlete,  enters 
college  as  an  athlete;  and  if  he  is  a 
good  athlete,  and  if  he  takes  decent  care 
of  his  body,  he  continues  his  college 
course  as  an  athlete,  —  with  new  expe- 
riences, it  is  true,  but  always  with  the 
thread  of  continuity  fairly  visible,  and 
with  the  relation  of  training  to  success 
clearly  in  view.  Palpably  bad  as  the 
management  of  college  athletics  has 
been  and  is,  misleading  as  the  predomi- 
nance of  athletics  in  an  institution  of 
learning  may  be,  the  fact  remains  that 
in  athletics  lies  a  saving,  power,  and  that 
for  many  a  boy  no  better  bridge  of  the 
gap  between  school  and  college  has  yet 
been  found.  The  Freshman  athlete,  left 
to  himself,  is  likely  to  fall  behind  in  his 
studies ;  but  unless  he  is  singularly  un- 
reasonable or  vicious,  he  is  where  an 
older  student  of  clear  head  and  strong 
will  can   keep   him  straight,  —  can  at 


SCHOOL   TO    COLLEGE        9 

least  save  him  from  those  deplorable 
falls  that,  to  a  greater  or  less  degree, 
bruise  and  taint  a  whole  life.  "  The 
trouble  will  begin,"  said  a  wise  man, 
talking  to  sub-Freshmen,  "in  the  first 
fortnight.  Some  evening  you  will  be 
with  a  lot  of  friends  in  somebody's 
room,  when  something  is  proposed  that 
you  know  is  n't  just  right.  Stop  it  if 
you  can ;  if  not,  go  home  and  go  to  bed, 
and  in  the  morning  you  will  be  glad  you 
did  n't  stay."  The  first  danger  in  the 
transition  from  boyhood  to  manhood  is 
the  danger  in  what  is  called  "  knowing 
life."  It  is  so  easy  to  let  mere  vulgar 
curiosity  pose  as  the  search  for  truth. 
A  Senior  who  had  been  in  a  fight  at  a 
public  dance  said  in  defence  of  himself: 
"  I  think  I  have  led  a  pretty  clean  life 
in  these  four  years ;  but  I  believe  that 
going  among  all  sorts  of  people  and 
knowing  them  is  the  best  thing  college 
life  can  give  us."  The  old  poet  knew 
better :  — 


io    THE  TRANSITION   FROM 

•'Let  no  man  say  there,  'Virtue's  flinty  wall 
Shall  lock  vice  in  me  ;  I  '11  do  none  but  know  all. 

Men  are  sponges,  which,  to  pour  out,  receive  ; 
Who  know  false  play,  rather  than  lose,  deceive  ; 

For  in  best  understandings  sin  began  ; 

Angels  sinned  first,  then  devils,  and  then  man.  " 

Here  comes  in  to  advantage  the  am- 
bition of  the  athlete.  Football  begins 
with  or  before  the  college  year.  Train- 
ing for  football  means  early  hours,  clean 
life,  constant  occupation  for  body  and 
mind.  Breach  of  training  means  ostra- 
cism. That  this  game  tides  many  a 
Freshman  over  a  great  danger,  by  keep- 
ing him  healthily  occupied,  I  have  come 
firmly  to  believe.  It  supplies  what  Pre- 
sident Eliot  calls  a  "new  and  effective 
motive  for  resisting  all  sins  which  weaken 
or  corrupt  the  body;"  it  appeals  to 
ambition  and  to  self-restraint;  it  gives 
to  crude  youth  a  task  in  which  crude 
youth  can'  attain  finish  and  skill,  can 
feel  the  power  that  comes  of  surmount- 
ing tremendous  obstacles  and  of  recog- 


.  SCHOOL  TO   COLLEGE       n 

nition  for  surmounting  them  ;  moreover, 
like  war,  it  affords  an  outlet  for  the  reck- 
less courage  of  young  manhood,  —  the 
same  reckless  courage  that  in  idle  days 
drives  young  men  headlong  into  vice. 

Has  not  hard  study,  also,  a  saving 
power  ?  Yes,  for  some  boys ;  but  for  a 
boy  full  of  animal  spirits,  and  not  spurred 
to  intellectual  effort  by  poverty,  the  pres- 
sure is  often  too  gentle,  the  reward  too 
remote.  Such  a  youth  may  be,  in  the 
first  place,  too  well  pleased  with  himself 
to  understand  his  relation  to  his  fellow 
men  and  the  respectability  of  labor.  He 
may  fail  to  see  that  college  life  does  not 
of  itself  make  a  man  distinguished ;  in 
a  vague  way,  he  feels  that  the  university 
is  gratefully  ornamented  by  his  presence. 
No  human  creature  can  be  more  com- 
placent than  a  Freshman,  unless  it  is  a 
Sophomore :  yet  the  Freshman  may  be 
simply  a  being  who,  with  no  particular 
merit  of  his  own,  has  received  a  great 
opportunity ;  and  the    Sophomore  may 


12    THE  TRANSITION   FROM 

be  simply  a  being  who  has  abused  that 
opportunity  for  a  year. 

Now  the  Freshman  meets,  in  a  large 
modern  college,  a  new  theory  of  intel- 
lectual discipline.  As  Professor  Peabody 
has  beautifully  expressed  it,  he  passes 
"  from  the  sense  of  study  as  an  obligation 
to  the  sense  of  study  as  an  opportunity." 
Too  often  he  regards  study  as  an  inferior 
opportunity ;  and  having  an  option  be- 
tween study  and  loafing,  he  takes  loafing. 
"  In  the  Medical  School,"  said  a  first- 
year  medical  student,  "  they  give  you  a 
lot  to  do ;  and  nobody  cares  in  the  least 
whether  you  do  it."  In  other  words,  the 
Medical  School  may  rely  on  the  com- 
bined stimulus  of  intellectual  ambition 
and  bread  and  butter :  its  Faculty  need 
not  prod  or  cosset ;  it  is  a  place  of  Devil 
take  the  hindmost.  Yet  the  change  in 
the  attitude  of  teacher  to  pupil  is  not 
more  sharply  marked  between  college 
and  medical  school  than  between  prepar- 
atory school  and  college.     "  There  are 


SCHOOL  TO   COLLEGE      13 

only  two  ways  of  getting  work  out  of 
a  boy"  said  a  young  college  graduate. 
"One  is  through  emulation;  the  other 
is  to  stand  behind  and  kick  him.1  Mr. 
X  [a  well-known  schoolmaster]  says, 
'  Jones,  will  you  please  do  this  or  that ; ' 
Mr.  Y  stands  behind  Jones  and  kicks 
him  into  college."  I  do  not  accept  the 
young  graduate's  alternative ;  but  I  have 
to  admit  that  many  boys  are  kicked,  or 
whipped,  or  cosseted,  or  otherwise  per- 
sonally conducted  into  college,  and,  once 
there,  are  as  hopelessly  lost  as  a  baby 
turned  loose  in  London.  "  It  took  me 
about  two  years  in  college  to  get  my 
bearings,"  said  an  earnest  man,  now  a 
superintendent  of  schools.  "I  didn't 
loaf;  I  simply  did  n't  know  how  to  get 
at  things.  In  those  days  there  was  no- 
body to  go  to  for  advice;  and  I  had 
never  read  anything,  —  had  never  been 
inside  of  a  public  library.  I  did  n't 
know  where  or  how  to  take  hold." 

1  Both  ways  are  known  in  football,  besides  what 
is  called  "cursing  up." 


i4    THE  TRANSITION   FROM 

This  is  the  story  of  a  man  who  longed 
to  take  hold;  and  we  must  remember 
that  many  of  our  college  boys  do  not  at 
first  care  whether  they  take  hold  or  not. 
It  is  only  in  football,  not  in  study,  that 
they  have  learned  to  tackle,  and  to  tackle 
low.  "  A  bolstered  boy,"  says  a  wise  mo- 
ther, "  is  an  unfortunate  man."  Many  of 
these  boys  have  been  bolstered;  many 
are  mothers'  boys ;  many  have  crammed 
day  and  night  through  the  hot  season  to 
get  into  college,  and,  once  in,  draw  a 
long  breath  and  lie  down.  The  main 
object  of  life  is  attained ;  and  for  any 
secondary  object  they  are  too  tired  to 
work.  The  old  time-table  of  morning 
school  gives  place  to  a  confusing  arrange- 
ment which  spreads  recitations  and  lec- 
tures unevenly  over  the  different  days. 
They  walk  to  a  large  lecture  room,  where 
a  man  who  is  not  going  to  question  them 
that  day  talks  for  an  hour,  more  or  less 
audibly.    He  is  a  long  way  off;1  and 

1  A  student  whose  name  begins  with  Y  told  me 
once  that  he  had  never  had  a  good  seat  in  his  life. 


SCHOOL  TO   COLLEGE      15 

though  he  is  talking  to  somebody,  he 
seems  not  to  be  talking  to  them.  It  is 
hard  to  listen ;  and  if  they  take  notes  (a 
highly  educational  process)  the  notes  will 
be  poor  :  besides,  if  they  need  notes,  they 
can  buy  them  later.  Why  not  let  the 
lecture  go,  and  sleep,  or  carve  the  furni- 
ture, or  think  about  something  else  (girls, 
for  instance)  ?  These  boys  are  in  a  poor 
frame  of  mind  for  new  methods  of  in- 
struction ;  yet  new  methods  of  instruc- 
tion they  must  have.  They  must  learn 
to  depend  upon  themselves,  to  become 
men ;  and  they  must  learn  that  hardest 
lesson  of  all,  —  that  a  man's  freedom 
consists  in  binding  himself:  still  again, 
they  must  learn  these  things  at  an  age 
when  the  average  boy  has  an  ill-seasoned 
body,  a  half-trained  mind,  jarred  nerves, 
his  first  large  sum  of  money,  all  manner 
of  diverting  temptations,  and  a  profound 
sense  of  his  own  importance.  How  can 
they  be  taken  down,  and  not  taken  down 
too  much,  —  thrown,  and  not  thrown  too 


16    THE  TRANSITION   FROM 

hard  *?  How  can  they  be  taught  the  re- 
sponsibility of  freedom  *?  They  face,  it 
may  be,  an  elective  system  which,  at  first 
sight,  seems  to  make  elective,  not  this  or 
that  study  merely,  but  the  habit  of  study- 
ing at  all.  Already  they  have  been  weak- 
ened by  the  failure  of  the  modern  parent 
and  the  modern  educator  to  see  steadily 
the  power  that  is  born  of  overcoming 
difficulties.  What  the  mind  indolently 
shrinks  from  is  readily  mistaken,  by  fond 
mothers,  mercenary  tutors,  and  seme  bet- 
ter people,  as  not  suited  to  the  genius  of 
the  boy  in  question.  "  It  is  too  much 
for  Jamie  to  learn  those  stupid  rules  of 
syntax,  when  he  has  a  passion  for  natural 
history ;  "  or,  "  George  never  could  learn 
geometry,  —  and  after  all,  we  none  of  us 
use  geometry  in  later  life.  He  expects 
to  be  a  lawyer,  like  his  father;  and  I 
can't  think  of  any  good  geometry  can 
do  him." 

The  change  "from  the  sense  of  study 
as  an  obligation  to  the  sense  of  study  as 


SCHOOL  TO   COLLEGE      17 

an  opportunity"  is  a  noble  change  for 
persons  mature  enough  to  turn  oppor- 
tunity into  obligation  :  it  is  not  a  noble 
change  for  those  who  choose  such  studies 
only  as  they  think  they  can  pass  with 
bought  notes.  Knowledge  that  does  not 
overcome  difficulties,  knowledge  that 
merely  absorbs  what  it  can  without  dis- 
agreeable effort,  is  not  power;  it  is  not 
even  manly  receptivity.  Milton,  to  be 
sure,  patient  toiler  and  conqueror  though 
he  was,  cried  in  his  pain,  "  God  loves  not 
to  plough  out  the  heart  of  our  endeavors 
with  overhard  and  sad  tasks : "  but  an 
overhard  and  sad  task  may  be  a  plain 
duty ;  and  even  Milton,  when  he  said 
this,  was  trying  to  get  rid  of  what  some 
people  would  call  a  plain  duty,  —  his 
wife.  When  we  consider  the  mass  and 
the  variety  of  the  Freshmen's  tempta- 
tions, and  what  some  one  has  called  the 
"  strain  on  their  higher  motives,"  we 
wonder  more  and  more  at  the  strength  of 
the  temptation  to  knowledge,  whereby  so 


i8    THE  TRANSITION   FROM 

many  stand  steady,  and  work  their  way 
out  into  clear-headed  and  trustworthy 
manhood. 

One  way  to  deal  with  these  strange, 
excited,  inexperienced,  and  intensely  hu- 
man things  called  Freshmen  is  to  let  them 
flounder  till  they  drown  or  swim ;  and 
this  way  has  been  advocated  by  men  who 
have  no  boys  of  their  own.  It  is  de- 
lightfully simple,  if  we  can  only  shut  eye 
and  ear  and  heart  and  conscience ;  and 
it  has  a  kind  of  plausibility  in  the  ex- 
amples of  men  who  through  rough  usage 
have  achieved  strong  character.  "  The 
objection,"  as  the  master  of  a  great  school 
said  the  other  day,  "  is  the  waste  ;  and," 
he  added,  "  it  is  such  an  awful  thing  to 
waste  human  life ! "  This  method  is  a 
cruel  method,  ignoring  all  the  sensibili- 
ties of  that  delicate,  high-strung  instru- 
ment which  we  call  the  soul.  If  none 
but  the  fittest  survived,  the  cruelty  might 
be  defended;  but  some,  who  unhappily 
cannot  drown,  become  cramped  swim- 


SCHOOL  TO   COLLEGE       19 

mers  for  all  their  days.  Busy  and  worn 
as  a  college  teacher  usually  is,  thirsty 
for  the  advancement  of  learning  as  he 
is  assumed  always  to  be,  he  cannot  let 
hundreds  of  young  men  pass  before  him, 
unheeded  and  unfriended.  At  Harvard 
College,  the  Faculty,  through  its  system 
of  advisers  for  Freshmen,  has  made  a 
beginning :  and  though  there  are  hardly 
enough  advisers  to  go  round,  the  system 
has  proved  its  usefulness.  At  Harvard 
College,  also,  a  large  committee  of 
Seniors  and  Juniors  has  assumed  some 
responsibility  for  all  the  Freshmen.  Each 
undertakes  to  see  at  the  beginning  of 
the  year  the  Freshmen  assigned  to  him, 
and  to  give  every  one  of  them,  besides 
kindly  greeting  and  good  advice,  the 
feeling  that  an  experienced  undergradu- 
ate may  be  counted  on  as  a  friend  in 
need. 

Whether  colleges  should  guard  their 
students  more  closely  than  they  do  — 
whether,  for  example,  they  should  with 


20    THE  TRANSITION    FROM 

gates  and  bars  protect  their  dormitories 
against  the  inroads  of  bad  women  —  is 
an  open  question.  For  the  deliberately 
vicious  such  safeguards  would  amount 
to  nothing ;  but  for  the  weak  they  might 
lessen  the  danger  of  sudden  temptation. 
Of  what  schools  should  do  I  can  say 
little  ;  for  with  schools  I  have  little  expe- 
rience :  but  this  I  know,  that  some  sys- 
tem of  gradually  increased  responsibility 
is  best  in  theory,  and  has  proved  good  in 
practice.  The  scheme  of  making  the 
older  and  more  influential  boys  "  pre- 
fects" has  worked  well  in  at  least  one 
large  preparatory  school,  and  shows  its 
excellence  in  the  attitude  of  the  prefects 
when  they  come  to  college.  This  scheme 
makes  a  confident  appeal  to  the  maturity 
of  some  boys  and  the  reasonableness  of 
all,  trusting  all  to  see  that  the  best  hopes 
of  teacher  and  scholar  are  one  and  the 
same. 

The   system   of  gradually  increased 


SCHOOL   TO   COLLEGE       21 

responsibility  at  school  must  be  met  half- 
way by  the  system  of  friendly  supervision 
at  college,  —  supervision  in  which  the 
older  undergraduates  are  quite  as  impor- 
tant as  the  Faculty.  The  Sophomore  who 
enjoys  hazing  (like  the  dean  who  em- 
ploys spies)  is  an  enemy  to  civilization. 
The  true  state  of  mind,  whether  for  pro- 
fessor or  for  student,  was  expressed  by 
a  college  teacher  long  ago.  "  I  hold  it," 
he  said,  "  a  part  of  my  business  to  do 
what  I  can  for  any  wight  that  comes  to 
this  place."  When  all  students  of  all 
colleges,  and  all  boys  of  all  schools,  be- 
lieve, and  have  the  right  to  believe,  that 
their  teachers  are  their  friends ;  when 
the  educated  public  recognizes  the  truth 
that  school  and  college  should  help  each 
other  in  lifting  our  youth  to  the  high 
ground  of  character,  —  the  school  never 
forgetting  that  boys  are  to  be  men,  and 
the  college  never  forgetting  that  men 
have  been  boys,  —  we  shall  come  to  the 


22      SCHOOL  TO   COLLEGE 

ideal  of  education.  Toward  this  ideal  we 
are  moving,  slowly  but  steadily.  When 
we  reach  it,  or  even  come  so  near  it  as 
to  see  it  always,  we  shall  cease  to  dread 
the  transition  from  school  to  college. 


THE   MISTAKES   OF   COLLEGE 
LIFE 

In  a  certain  sense,  college  is  the  place 
for  mistakes.  In  college  a  young  man 
tests  his  strength,  and,  while  testing  it, 
is  protected  from  the  results  of  failure  far 
more  effectively  than  he  will  ever  be  pro- 
tected afterward.  The  youth  who  is  de- 
termined to  succeed  in  public  speaking 
may  stand  up  again  and  again  in  a  col- 
lege debating  club,  may  fail  again  and 
again,  and  through  his  failure  may  rise 
to  success  ;  whereas  if  he  should  put  off 
his  efforts  until  some  political  campaign 
had  called  him  to  the  stump,  no  audience 
would  listen  to  him,  or  even  let  him  go 


24  THE   MISTAKES   OF 

on.  "  The  mistakes  that  make  us  men," 
says  Dr.  Lyman  Abbott,  "  are  better  than 
the  accuracies  that  keep  us  children." 
Yet  even  in  college  there  are  mistakes 
by  which  the  career  of  a  happy,  well- 
meaning  youth  is  suddenly  darkened  ; 
and  though  he  may  learn  out  of  the  very 
bitterness  of  his  experience,  he  is  never 
quite  the  same  again. 

All  boys  with  a  fair  chance  in  the  world 
have  at  their  best  a  common  motive,  — 
to  be  of  some  use,  to  lead  active,  efficient 
lives,  to  do  something  worth  doing,  and 
to  do  it  well,  to  become  men  on  whom 
people  instinctively  and  not  in  vain  rely. 
Men  and  women  may  be  divided  roughly 
into  two  classes, — those  who  are  "there," 
and  those  who  are  "  not  there."  The 
"  not  there"  people  may  be  clever, 
may  be  what  is  called  "  good  company," 
may  have,  even  after  you  know  them 
pretty  well,  a  good  deal  of  personal 
charm ;  but  once  know  them  through 
and  through,  and  you  have  no  use  for 


COLLEGE   LIFE  25 

them.  The  "  there  "  people  may  be  un- 
polished, unmagnetic,  without  social 
charm ;  but  once  understand  that  they 
are  "  there,"  and  you  get  help  and  com- 
fort from  the  mere  knowledge  that  there 
are  such  people  in  the  world.  Every  boy 
in  his  heart  of  hearts  admires  a  man  who 
is  "  there,"  and  wishes  to  be  like  him ; 
but  not  every  boy  (and  here  is  the  sad 
part  of  it)  understands  that  to  be  "  there" 
is  the  result  of  a  long  process,  the  result 
of  training  day  by  day  and  year  by  year, 
precisely  as  to  be  a  sure  man  (I  do  not 
say  a  brilliant  man)  in  the  pitcher's  box 
or  behind  the  bat  is  the  result  of  long 
training.  A  single  decision  or  indecision, 
an  act  of  a  moment  or  a  moment's  fail- 
ure to  act,  may  turn  a  whole  life  awry ; 
but  the  weakness  of  that  moment  is  only 
the  expression  of  a  weakness  which  for 
months  or  for  years  has  been  undermin- 
ing the  character,  or  at  best  the  result  of 
a  failure  to  train  body,  mind,  and  heart 
for  the  emergencies  of  life. 


26  THE   MISTAKES   OF 

In  this  training  we  can  learn,  if  we 
will,  from  other  people's  experience  ;  and 
although  boys  are  loath  to  accept  any- 
body's experience  but  their  own,  and  are 
not  always  wise  enough  to  accept  that, 
it  is  yet  worth  while  to  show  them  some 
dangers  which  other  boys  have  met  or 
have  failed  to  meet,  that  they  may  not 
be  taken  unawares.  A  great  man,  almost 
too  far  above  the  temptations  of  the  aver- 
age boy  to  understand  them,  has  con- 
demned talking  to  boys  and  young  men 
about  temptation  ;  he  would  fill  their 
minds  with  good  things :  but  there  are 
no  boys  whose  minds  are  so  full  of  good 
things  that  a  temptation  cannot  get  in 
edgewise.  An  absorbing  interest  in  a 
good  something  or  a  good  somebody 
holds  back  and  may  finally  banish  the 
worst  temptations ;  it  is  quite  as  impor- 
tant to  interest  boys  in  good  things  as 
to  take  away  their  interest  in  bad  ones  : 
but  when  all  is  said,  the  lightest  hearted 
boy  who  comes  to  manhood  must  come 


*   COLLEGE   LIFE  27 

to  it  "through  sorrows  and  through 
scars." 

To  many  boys  the  beginning  of  col- 
lege life  is  the  first  step  into  the  world. 
Its  dangers  are  much  like  those  of  other 
first  steps  into  the  world,  yet  with  this 
difference :  the  college  boy  has  the  ad- 
vantage of  living  where  ideals  are  noble, 
and  the  disadvantage  (if  he  is  weak  or 
immature)  of  living  where  he  need  not 
get  heartily  tired  day  after  day  in  keep- 
ing long,  inevitable  hours  of  work.  This 
disadvantage  is  indeed  a  privilege,  but  a 
privilege  which  like  all  privileges  is  bad 
unless  accorded  to  a  responsible  being. 
To  discipline  one's  self,  to  hold  one's  self 
responsible,  is  ever  so  much  better  than 
to  be  disciplined,  to  be  held  responsible 
by  somebody  else ;  but  it  is  a  task  for  a 
man.  Naturally  enough,  then,  the  mis- 
takes and  the  sins  of  college  life  are 
commonly  rooted  in  boyish  irresponsi- 
bility. 

The  average  youth  takes  kindly  to  the 


28  THE   MISTAKES   OF 

notion  that  in  the  first  year  or  two  at 
college  he  need  not  be  bound  by  the  or- 
dinary restraints  of  law-abiding  men  and 
women.  "  Boys  will  be  boys,"  even  to 
the  extent  of  sowing  wild  oats.  Time 
enough  to  settle  down  by  and  by ;  mean- 
while the  world  is  ours.  A  year  or  so 
of  lawlessness  will  be  great  fun,  and  will 
give  us  large  experience ;  and  even  if 
we  shock  some  good  people,  we  are  but 
doing  the  traditional  thing.  A  youth 
who  feels  thus  takes  prompt  offence  if 
treated,  as  he  says,  "  like  a  kid  ; "  yet  he 
may  do  things  so  low  that  any  honest 
child  would  despise  them.  Nor  is  this 
true  of  one  sex  only.  I  have  heard  a  mar- 
ried woman  recount  with  satisfaction  her 
two  nights'  work  in  stealing  a  sign  when 
she  was  at  college ;  and  her  father,  a  col- 
lege man,  listened  with  sympathetic  joy. 
I  have  known  a  youth  who  held  a  large 
scholarship  in  money  to  steal,  or  —  as  he 
preferred  to  say  —  "pinch,"  an  instru- 
ment worth  several  dollars  from  the  lab- 


COLLEGE   LIFE  29 

oratory  where  he  was  trusted  as  he  would 
have  been  trusted  in  a  gentleman's  par- 
lor. I  have  even  heard  of  students  who 
bought  signs,  and  hung  them  up  in  their 
rooms  to  get  the  reputation  of  stealing 
them.  Surely  there  is  nothing  in  college 
life  to  make  crime  a  joke.  A  street 
"mucker"  sneaks  into  a  student's  room 
and  steals  half  a  dozen  neckties  (for 
which  the  student  has  not  paid),  and 
nothing  is  too  hard  for  him ;  a  student 
steals  a  poor  laundryman's  sign  for  fun : 
may  a  gentleman  do  without  censure 
what  sends  a  "mucker"  to  jail?  If  the 
gentleman  is  locked  up  in  the  evening 
to  be  taken  before  the  judge  in  the  morn- 
ing, his  friends  are  eager  to  get  him  out. 
Yet  in  one  night  of  ascetic  meditation 
he  may  learn  more  than  in  his  whole 
previous  life  of  his  relation  to  the  rights 
of  his  fellow  men.  One  of  the  first  les- 
sons in  college  life  is  an  axiom :  Crime 
is  crime,  and  a  thief  is  a  thief,  even  at  an 
institution  of  learning.   The  college  thief 


30  THE  MISTAKES   OF 

has,  it  is  true,  a  different  motive  from  his 
less  favored  brother ;  but  is  the  motive 
better  ?  Is  there  not  at  the  root  of  it  a 
misunderstanding  of  one  man's  relation 
to  another,  so  selfish  that,  in  those  who 
ought  to  be  the  flower  of  American 
youth,  it  would  be  hardly  conceivable  if 
we  did  not  see  it  with  our  own  eyes? 
People  sometimes  wonder  at  the  de- 
sire of  towns  to  tax  colleges,  instead 
of  helping  them.  A  small  number  of 
students  who  steal  signs,  and  refuse  to 
pay  bills  unless  the  tradesman's  man- 
ner pleases  them,  may  well  account  for 
it  all. 

As  there  is  nothing  in  college  life  to 
justify  a  thief,  so  there  is  nothing  in  it 
to  justify  a  liar.  College  boys  in  their 
relation  to  one  another  are  quite  as  truth- 
ful as  other  people ;  but  some  of  them 
regard  their  dealings  with  college  author- 
ities as  some  men  regard  horse-trades. 
We  know  them  capable  of  distinguish- 
ing  truth   from    falsehood,   since   their 


COLLEGE   LIFE  31 

standard  of  integrity  for  their  teachers 
is  sensitively  high.  Their  standard  for 
themselves  is  part  of  that  conceit,  of 
that  blind  incapacity  for  the  Golden 
Rule,  which  is  often  characteristic  of 
early  manhood.  To  this  blindness  most 
books  about  school  and  college  life  con- 
tribute. Even  the  healthier  of  these 
books  stir  the  reader's  sympathy  in  be- 
half of  the  gentlemanly,  happy-go-lucky 
youth  who  pulls  wool  over  the  eyes  of 
his  teachers,  and  deepen  the  impression 
that  college  boys  live  in  a  fairyland  of 
charming  foolery,  and  are  no  more  mor- 
ally responsible  than  the  gods  of  Olym- 
pus. Plainly  such  a  theory  of  college 
life,  even  if  no  one  holds  to  it  long, 
nurses  a  selfishness  and  an  insincerity 
which  may  outlast  the  theory  that  has 
nourished  them.  The  man  who  has  his 
themes  written  for  him,  or  who  cribs  at 
examinations,  or  who  excuses  himself 
from  college  lectures  because  of  "sick- 
ness "  in  order  to  rest  after  or  before  a 


32  THE  MISTAKES   OF 

dance,  may  be  clever  and  funny  to  read 
about ;  but  his  cleverness  and  "  funni- 
ness"  are  not  many  degrees  removed 
from  those  of  the  forger  and  the  im- 
postor, who  may  also  be  amusing  in 
fiction. 

Another  bad  thing  in  the  substitution 
of  excuses,  even  fairly  honest  excuses, 
for  work  is  the  weakening  effect  of  it  on 
everyday  life.  The  work  of  the  world  is 
in  large  measure  done  by  people  whose 
heads  and  throats  and  stomachs  do  not 
feel  just  right,  but  who  go  about  their 
daily  duties,  and  in  doing  them  forget 
their  heads  and  throats  and  stomachs. 
He  who  is  to  be  "  there  "  as  a  man  can- 
not afford  to  cosset  himself  as  a  boy.  A 
well-known  railroad  man  has  remarked 
that  he  knows  in  his  business  two  kinds 
of  men :  one,  with  a  given  piece  of  work 
to  do  before  a  given  time,  comes  back  at 
the  appointed  hour  and  says,  "  That  job 
is  done.  I  found  unexpected  difficulties, 
but  it  is  done ; "  the  other  comes  back 


COLLEGE   LIFE  33 

with  "several  excellent  reasons"  why 
the  job  is  not  done.  "  I  have,"  says  the 
railroad  man,  "  no  use  for  the  second  of 
these  men."  Nor  has  any  business  man 
use  for  him.  The  world  is  pretty  cold 
toward  chronic  invalids  and  excuse- 
mongers.  "  If  you  are  too  sick  to  be 
here  regularly,"  it  says,  "  I  am  sorry  for 
you,  but  I  shall  have  to  employ  a  health- 
ier man."  You  will  find,  by  the  way, 
that  it  is  easier  to  attend  all  your  re- 
citations than  to  attend  half  or  three- 
quarters  of  them.  Once  open  the  ques- 
tion of  not  going,  and  you  see  "  several 
excellent  reasons"  for  staying  at  home. 
Routine,  as  all  mature  men  know,  stead- 
ies nerves,  and,  when  used  intelligently, 
adds  contentment  to  life. 

I  have  spoken  of  lying  to  college  offi- 
cers, and  of  excuses  which,  if  I  may  use 
an  undergraduate  expression,  "  may  be 
right,  but  are  not  stylish  right."  I  come 
next  to  the  question  of  responsibility  to 
father  and  mother  in  matters  of  truth  and 


34  THE  MISTAKES  OF 

falsehood.  One  of  the  evils  from  vice  of 
all  sorts  at  college  is  the  lying  that  re- 
sults from  it.  Shame  and  fear,  half  dis- 
guised as  a  desire  not  to  worry  parents, 
cut  off  many  a  father  and  mother  from 
knowing  what  they  have  a  right  to 
know,  and  what  they,  if  confided  in, 
might  remedy.  I  have  seldom  seen  a 
student  in  serious  trouble  who  did  not 
say —  honestly  enough,  I  presume — that 
he  cared  less  for  his  own  mortification 
than  for  his  father's  and  mother's.  As 
a  rule,  one  of  his  parents  is  threatened 
with  nervous  prostration,  or  oppressed 
with  business  cares,  or  has  a  weak  heart 
which,  as  the  son  argues,  makes  the 
receipt  of  bad  news  dangerous.  Filial 
affection,  which  has  been  so  dormant  as 
to  let  the  student  do  those  things  which 
would  distress  his  parents  most,  awakes 
instantiy  at  the  thought  that  the  parents 
must  learn  what  he  has  done.  The  two 
severest  rebukes  of  a  certain  gentie  mo- 
ther were :  "  You  ought  to  have  meant 


COLLEGE   LIFE  35 

not  to,"  and  "You  ought  to  have  been 
sorry  beforehand." 

Many  a  student,  knowing  that  the 
college  must  communicate  with  his  fa- 
ther, will  not  nerve  himself  to  the  duty 
and  the  filial  kindness  of  telling  his  fa- 
ther first.  I  remember  a  boy  who  was  to 
be  suspended  for  drunkenness,  and  who 
was  urged  to  break  the  news  to  his  fa- 
ther before  the  official  letter  went. 

"  You  don't  know  my  father,"  he  said. 
"  My  father  is  a  very  severe  man,  and  I 
can't  tell  him." 

"  The  only  thing  you  can  do  for  him," 
was  the  answer,  "  is  to  let  him  feel  that 
you  are  able  and  willing  to  tell  him  first, 
—  that  you  give  him  your  confidence." 

"  Oh,  you  don't  know  him,"  said  the 
boy  again. 

"Is  there  any  'out'  about  your  father?" 

"  No  "  (indignantly) !  "  You  would 
respect  him  and  admire  him ;  but  he 
is  a  very  severe  man." 

"Then  he  has  a  right   to  hear  and 


36  THE  MISTAKES   OF 

to  hear  first  from  you.  You  cannot 
help  him  more  than  by  telling  him,  or 
hurt  him  more  than  by  hiding  the  truth 
from  him." 

A  day  or  two  later  the  boy  came  back 
to  the  college  office.  "My  father  is  a 
brick ! "  he  said.  In  his  confession  he  had 
learned  for  the  first  time  how  much  his 
father  cared  for  him. 

A  young  man,  intensely  curious  about 
the  wickedness  of  life,  is  easily  persuaded 
that  the  first  business  of  a  college  student 
is  "to  know  life,"  —  that  is,  to  know  the 
worst  things  in  it ;  and,  in  the  pursuit  of 
wisdom,  he  sets  out  in  the  evening,  with 
others,  merely  to  see  the  vice  of  a  great 
city.  He  calls  at  a  house  where  he  meets 
bad  men  and  bad  women,  and  eats  and 
drinks  with  them.  What  he  eats  and 
drinks  he  does  not  know;  but  in  the 
morning  he  is  still  there,  with  a  life  stain 
upon  him,  and  needing  more  than  ever 
before  to  confide  in  father  or  mother  or 
in  some  good  physician.   Yet  the  people 


COLLEGE   LIFE  37 

who  can  help  him  most,  the  people  also 
in  whom  he  must  confide  or  be  false  to 
them,  are  the  very  people  he  avoids. 

Again,  it  is  hard  to  prove  by  cold  logic 
that  gambling  is  wrong.  A  young  man 
says  to  himself,  "  If  I  wish  to  spend  a  dol- 
lar in  this  form  of  amusement,  why  should 
I  not  ?  I  know  perfectly  well  what  I  am 
about  I  am  playing  with  money  not  play- 
ing for  it.  In  some  countries  —  in  Eng- 
land, for  example — clergymen,  and  good 
people  generally,  play  whist  with  shilling 
stakes,  and  would  not  think  of  playing  it 
without."  So  of  vice  he  says,  "  No  man 
knows  human  nature  until  he  has  seen 
the  dark  side.  I  shall  be  a  broader  man 
if  I  know  these  things ;  and  some  phy- 
sicians recommend  the  practice  of  them 
in  moderation."  When  we  say,  "  Lead 
us  not  into  temptation,"  we  forget  that 
one  of  the  worst  temptations  in  the  world 
is  the  temptation  to  be  led  into  tempta- 
tion, —  the  temptation  to  gratify  vulgar 
curiosity,  and  to  see  on  what  thin  ice  we 


fd("> ' 


38  THE   MISTAKES   OF 

can  walk.  No  man  is  safe  ;  no  man  can 
tell  what  he  shall  do,  or  what  others  will 
do  to  him,  if  he  once  enters  a  gambling 
house  or  a  brothel.  The  history  of  every 
city,  and  the  history  of  every  college,  will 
prove  what  I  say.  There  is  no  wisdom 
in  looking  at  such  places,  —  nothing  but 
greenness  and  folly.  The  difficulty  with 
gambling  is,  as  some  one  has  said,  that 
"  it  eats  the  heart  out  of  a  man,"  —  that 
imperceptibly  the  playing  with  slips  into 
the  playing  for,  until  without  gambling 
life  seems  tame :  and  the  difficulty  with 
vice  is  that  it  involves  physical  danger 
of  the  most  revolting  kind  ;  that  it  kills 
self-respect ;  that  it  brings  with  it  either 
shamelessness  or  a  miserable  dishonesty 
for  decency's  sake  ;  and  that  it  is  a  breach 
of  trust  to  those  who  are,  or  who  are 
to  be,  the  nearest  and  the  dearest,  —  a 
breach  of  trust  to  father  and  mother,  and 
to  the  wife  and  children,  who  may  seem 
remote  and  unreal,  but  who  to  most 
young  men  are  close  at  hand.   By  the 


COLLEGE   LIFE  39 

time  a  boy  goes  to  college,  he  may  well 
feel  responsibility  to  the  girl  whom  some 
day  he  will  respect  and  love,  and  who, 
he  hopes,  will  respect  and  love  him.  A 
boy's  or  man's  sense  of  fair  play  should 
show  him  that  it  is  effrontery  in  a  man 
who  has  been  guilty  of  vice  with  women 
to  ask  for  a  pure  girl's  love.  The  time  is 
only  too  likely  to  come  when  a  young 
fellow  who  has  yielded  to  the  tremendous 
sudden  temptation  that  is  thrown  at  him 
in  college  and  in  the  world,  will  face  the 
bitter  question,  "  Can  I  tell  the  truth 
about  myself  to  the  girl  I  love?  If  I  tell 
it,  I  may  justly  lose  her  ;  if  I  do  not  tell 
it,  my  whole  life  may  be  a  frightened  lie." 

"Who  is  the  Happy  Husband  ?  He 
Who,  scanning  his  unwedded  life, 
Thanks  Heaven,  with  a  conscience  free, 
'T  was  faithful  to  his  future  wife." 

Not  merely  the  curiosity  which  listens 
to  false  arguments  about  life  and  wisdom, 
but  the  awful  loneliness  of  a  boy  far  from 
home,  may  lead  to  vice  and  misery.   The 


40  THE  MISTAKES  OF 

boy  who  is  used  to  girls  at  home,  and 
who  knows  in  his  new  surroundings  no 
such  girls  as  he  knew  at  home,  no  such 
girls  as  his  sisters'  friends,  is  only  too 
likely  to  scrape  an  easy  acquaintance 
with  some  of  those  inferior  girls  by  whom 
every  student  is  seen  in  a  kind  of  glamour, 
and  to  whom  acquaintance  with  students 
is  the  chief  excitement  of  life.  With  litde 
education,  much  giddy  vanity,  and  no 
refinement,  these  girls  may  yet  possess  a 
sort  of  cheap  attractiveness.  They  are, 
besides,  easy  to  get  acquainted  with,  easy 
to  be  familiar  with,  and  interesting  sim- 
ply because  they  are  girls  —  for  the  time 
being,  the  only  accessible  girls.  I  need 
not  dwell  on  the  embarrassment,  the  sor- 
row, and  even  the  crime,  in  which  such 
friendships  may  end ;  but  I  may  empha- 
size the  responsibility  of  every  man, 
young  or  old,  towards  every  woman. 
"  Every  free  and  generous  spirit,"  said 
Milton,  "ought  to  be  born  a  knight." 
It  is  the  part  of  a  man  to  protect  these 


COLLEGE   LIFE  41 

girls  against  themselves.  If  they  know 
no  better  than  to  hint  to  a  student  that 
they  should  like  to  see  his  room  some 
evening,  he  knows  better  than  to  take 
the  hint,  —  better  than  to  suffer  them 
through  him  to  do  what,  though  it  may 
not  stain  their  character,  may  yet  de- 
stroy their  good  name.,  No  girls  stand 
more  in  need  of  chivalry  than  these  vain 
girls,  not  yet  bad,  who  flutter  about  the 
precincts  of  a  college. 

Students  know  what  responsibility 
means ;  but  their  views  of  it  are  dis- 
torted. They  demand  it  of  their  elders  ; 
in  certain  parts  of  athletics  they  demand 
it  of  themselves.  Which  is  the  worse 
breach  of  faith,  to  sit  up  a  quarter  of 
an  hour  later  than  your  athletic  trainer 
allows,  or  to  betray  the  trust  that  father 
and  mother  have  put  in  you,  to  gamble 
away  or  to  spend  on  low  women  the 
money  sent  you  for  your  term-bill,  and 
to  cover  all  with  a  lie  ? 

It  may  be  from  a  dim  notion  of  these 


42  THE   MISTAKES   OF 

eccentricities  in  undergraduate  judgment 
that  many  boys  cultivate  irresponsibility 
with  a  view  to  social  success.  Social  am- 
bition is  the  strongest  power  in  many  a 
student's  college  life,  a  power  compared 
with  which  all  the  rules  and  all  the  threats 
of  the  Faculty,  who  blindly  ignore  it,  are 
impotent,  a  power  that  robs  boys  of  their 
independence,  leading  them  to  do  things 
foolish  or  worse  and  thereby  to  defeat 
their  own  end.  For  in  the  long  run,  —  in 
the  later  years  of  the  college  course,  — 
the  "  not  there  "  and  the  "  there  "  can  be 
clearly  distinguished.  A  student  may  be 
poor,  he  may  not  play  poker,  he  may  not 
drink,  he  may  be  free  from  all  vice,  he 
may  not  even  smoke  ;  and  yet,  if  his 
virtue  is  not  showy,  he  will  be  popular 
—  provided  he  "  does  something  for  his 
class."  "He  is  a  bully  fellow,"the  students 
say.   "  He  is  in  training  all  the  time." 

I  say  little  of  responsibility  to  younger 
students.  An  older  student  who  misleads 
a  younger  gets  just  about  the  name  he 


COLLEGE    LIFE  43 

deserves.  Even  the  Sophomore  who  se- 
riously hazes  a  Freshman  is  now  in  the 
better  colleges  recognized  as  a  coward. 
Cowardice  once  recognized,  cannot  long 
prevail ;  yet  there  was  a  time  when  it 
took  a  deal  of  courage  for  a  few  young 
men  in  one  of  our  great  colleges  to  stop 
an  outbreak  of  hazing.  It  took  a  deal 
of  courage ;  but  they  did  it.  After  all, 
a  student  admires  nothing  so  much  as 
"  sand."  What  he  needs  is  to  see  that 
"  sand  "  belongs  not  merely  in  war  and 
athletics,  but  in  everyday  life,  and  that 
in  everyday  life  "  sand "  may  be  accu- 
mulated. A  Harvard  student,  it  is  said, 
was  nearly  dressed  one  morning  and 
was  choosing  a  necktie,  when  his  door, 
which  with  the  carelessness  of  youth  he 
had  left  unlocked,  suddenly  opened.  A 
woman  entered,  closed  the  door  behind 
her,  put  her  back  to  it,  and  said,  "  I  want 
fifty  dollars.  If  you  don't  give  it  to  me, 
I  shall  scream."  The  young  man,  still 
examining  his  neckties,  quietly  replied, 


44  THE  MISTAKES  OF 

"  You  'd  better  holler ; "  and  the  woman 
went  out.  Had  he  given  her  money,  had 
he  even  paid  serious  attention  to  her 
threat,  he  might  have  been  in  her  power 
for  life ;  but  his  coolness  saved  him.  An- 
other undergraduate,  who  before  coming 
to  college  had  worked  as  an  engineer, 
and  who  was  a  few  years  older  than 
most  of  his  class,  went  one  evening  to 
an  officer  of  the  college  who  knew  some- 
thing of  him,  and  said,  "  I  hardly  know 
just  how  I  ought  to  speak  to  you  ;  but 
in  my  building  there  is  a  Freshman  who 
is  going  to  pieces,  and  a  Senior  who  is 
largely  responsible  for  it."  He  then  told 
what  he  had  seen,  and  gave  the  names 
of  both  men.  "  If  I  look  this  up,"  said 
the  college  officer,  "are  you  willing  to 
appear  in  it?  Are  you  willing  to  have 
your  name  known  ?  "  "I'd  rather  not 
be  ■  queered,'  "  he  answered  ;  "  but  if  it 
is  necessary  to  be  'queered,'  I  will  be." 
All  this  happened  in  a  college  which 
employs  no  spies  and  discourages  tale- 


COLLEGE  LIFE  45 

bearing.  For  anything  the  student  knew, 
the  officer  himself  might  think  him  a 
malicious  informer.  The  "  sand  "  in  the 
hero  of  the  first  of  these  little  stories  any 
boy  would  see.  To  see  the  "  sand  "  in 
the  hero  of  the  second  takes  some  ex- 
perience ;  but  "  sand,"  and  "  sand "  of 
the  finest  quality,  was  there.  This  man's 
notion  'of  the  responsibility  of  older  stu- 
dents to  younger  ones  had  in  it  some- 
thing positive.  "  You  have  no  idea," 
said  a  senator  to  Father  Taylor,  the 
sailor  preacher,  who  had  rebuked  him 
for  his  vote,  "  You  have  no  idea  what  the 
outside  pressure  was."  "  Outside  pres- 
sure, Mr.  Senator  !  Outside  pressure  1 
Where  were  your  inside  braces?"  To 
run  the  risk  of  being  thought  a  common 
informer  when  you  are  not,  and  to  run 
it  because  you  cannot  let  a  man  go  under 
without  trying  to  pull  him  out,  requires 
such  inside  braces  as  few  undergraduates 
possess. 

Let  me  say,  however,  that  there  is  no 


46  THE   MISTAKES   OF 

better  hope  for  Harvard  College  than  in 
the  readiness  of  the  strong  to  help  the 
weak.  A  youth  is  summoned  to  the  col- 
lege office,  behindhand  in  his  work,  and 
bad  in  his  way  of  living.  The  Faculty 
has  done  its  best  for  him,  and  to  no  pur- 
pose. A  student  of  acknowledged  stand- 
ing in  athletics  and  in  personal  charac- 
ter appears  at  the  office,  and  says,  "  I 
should  like  to  see  whether  I  can  make 
that  man  work  and  keep  him  straight." 
This,  or  something  like  this,  occurs  so 
often  that  it  is  an  important  part  of  the 
college  life.  Moreover,  when  the  strong 
man  comes,  he  does  not  come  with  the 
foolish  notion  that  he  shall  help  the  weak 
man  in  the  eyes  of  the  college  office  by 
pretending  that  he  is  not  weak.  He  takes 
the  case  as  it  stands,  knowing  that  his 
own  purpose  and  that  of  the  college  of- 
fice are  one  and  the  same,  —  to  keep  the 
student,  if  he  can  be  made  into  a  man, 
and  otherwise  in  all  kindness  to  send 
him  home. 


COLLEGE   LIFE  47 

One  more  responsibility  needs  men- 
tioning here,  —  responsibility  to  our 
work.  In  college,  it  is  said,  a  man  of 
fair  capacity  may  do  well  one  thing 
beside  his  college  work,  and  one  thing 
only.  Those  of  us  who  are  so  fortunate 
as  to  earn  our  own  living  must  spend 
most  of  our  waking  hours  in  work.  It 
follows  that  we  must  learn  to  enjoy  work 
or  be  unhappy.  Now  we  learn  to  enjoy 
work  by  working ;  to  get  interested  in 
any  task  by  doing  it  with  all  our  strength. 
This  is  the  first  lesson  of  scholarship  : 
without  it  we  cannot  be  scholars ;  and 
only  by  courtesy  can  we  be  called  stu- 
dents. This  is  the  first  lesson  of  happy 
activity  in  life.  In  athletics,  in  music, 
in  study,  in  business,  we  "train"  our- 
selves toward  the  free  exercise  of  our 
best  powers,  toward  the  joy  that  comes  of 
mastery.  A  college  oarsman  once  de- 
clared that  after  a  season  on  the  slides  he 
felt  able  to  undertake  anything.  The  in- 
tellectual interests  of  a  modern  university 


48  THE   MISTAKES   OF 

are  bewildering  and  intense.  Among 
them  every  intelligent  youth  can  find 
something  worthy  of  his  best  labors, 
something  in  which  his  best  labors  will 
yield  enjoyment  beyond  price.  Right- 
minded  students  see  the  noble  oppor- 
tunity in  a  college  life ;  and  there  is  no 
sadder  sight  than  the  blindness  of  those 
who  do  not  see  it  until  it  is  lost  for- 
ever. 

While  speaking  of  the  intellectual 
side  of  college  life,  I  may  warn  students 
against  becoming  specialists  too  early. 
Every  study  has  some  connection  with 
every  other  and  gets  some  light  from 
it ;  but  a  specialty,  seriously  undertaken, 
compels  a  close  study  of  itself,  and  may 
leave  little  time  for  other  study.  An  un- 
enlightened specialist  is  a  narrow  being ; 
and  he  who  becomes  an  exclusive  spe- 
cialist before  he  has  been  in  college  two 
years  is  usually  unenlightened.  Even 
after  the  choice  of  a  specialty,  a  stu- 
dent, like  a  professional  man,  may  wisely 


COLLEGE   LIFE  49 

reserve  one  corner  of  his  mind  for  some- 
thing totally  different  from  his  specialty, 
and  may  find  in  that  little  corner  a  relief 
which  makes  him  a  better  specialist.  It 
is  good  for  a  man  buried  in  a  chemical 
laboratory  to  take  a  course  in  English 
poetry;  it  is  good  for  a  man  steeped 
in  literature  to  have  a  mild  infusion  of 
chemistry. 

The  lazy  student  (if  I  may  return  to 
him  now)  finds  the  thread  of  his  study 
broken  by  his  frequent  absences  from 
the  lecture  room,  and  finds  the  lecture 
hour  a  long,  dull  period  of  hard  seats  and 
wandering  thoughts.  Note-taking  would 
shorten  the  hour,  soften  the  seats,  sim- 
plify the  subject,  and  make  the  whole 
situation  vastly  more  interesting.  No 
matter  if  some  clever  students  are  willing 
to  sell  him  notes,  and  he  has  no  scruples 
about  buying  them  ;  the  mere  process 
of  note-taking,  apart  from  the  education 
and  training  in  it,  gives  him  something 
to  do  in  the  lecture  room,  makes  it  im- 


50  THE   MISTAKES   OF 

possible  for  him  not  to  know  something" 
of  the  subject,  and  shortens  his  period 
of  cramming  for  examination.  I  believe, 
further,  that  a  student's  happiness  is  in- 
creased by  a  time-table  of  regular  hours 
for  work  in  each  study.  The  prepara- 
tion of  theses,  and  the  necessity  of  using 
library  books  when  other  people  are  not 
using  them,  make  it  hard  now  and  then 
to  follow  a  time-table  strictly  ;  but  in  gen- 
eral such  a  table  is  a  wonderful  saver  of 
time.  If  a  student  leaves  one  lecture 
room  at  ten  and  goes  to  another  at  twelve 
and  has  no  idea  what  he  wishes  to  do 
between  ten  and  twelve,  he  is  likely  to 
do  nothing.  Even  if  he  has  determined 
to  study,  he  loses  time  in  getting  under 
way  —  in  deciding  what  to  study.  Work 
with  a  time-table  tends  to  promptness  in 
transition ;  and  when  the  time-table  for 
the  day  is  carried  out,  the  free  hours  are 
truly  free,  a  time  of  clear  and  well-earned 
recreation.  At  school  the  morning  rou- 
tine is  prescribed  by  the  teacher.   At  col- 


COLLEGE   LIFE  51 

lege,  where  it  should  be  prescribed  by 
the  student,  it  frequently  breaks  down. 
A  man's  freedom,  as  viewed  with  a  boy's 
eyes,  is  liberty  to  waste  time :  it  is  the 
luxury  of  spending-  the  best  morning- 
hours  in  a  billiard  room,  or  loafing  in  a 
classmate's  "  study  ; "  the  joy  of  hearing 
the  bell  ring  and  ring  for  you,  while  you 
sit  high  above  the  slaves  of  toil  and  puff 
the  smoke  of  cigarettes  with  the  superb 
indifference  of  a  small  cloud-compelling 
Zeus.  The  peculiar  evil  in  cigarettes 
I  leave  for  scientific  men  to  explain ;  I 
know  merely  that  among  college  stu- 
dents the  excessive  cigarette  smokers  are 
recognized  even  by  other  smokers  as  re- 
presenting the  feeblest  form  of  intellec- 
tual and  moral  life.  At  their  worst  they 
have  no  backbone  ;  they  cannot  tell  (and 
possibly  cannot  see)  the  truth  ;  and  they 
loaf.  Senator  Hoar,  in  an  address  to 
Harvard  students,  remarked  that  in  his 
judgment  the  men  who  succeed  best  in 
life  are  the  men  who  have  made  the  best 


52  THE   MISTAKES   OF 

use  of  the  odd  moments  at  college,  and 
that,  contrary  to  the  general  opinion,  it  is 
worse  to  loaf  in  college  than  to  loaf  in  a 
professional  school.  The  young  lawyer, 
he  observed,  who  has  neglected  the  law 
may  make  up  his  deficiencies  in  the 
early  years  of  his  practice ;  "he  will 
have  plenty  of  time  then  :  "  but  there  is 
no  recovery  of  the  years  thrown  away  at 
college. 

Once  more,  if  we  could  only  teach  by 
the  experience  of  others,  we  should  save 
untold  misery.  I  met  not  long  since  a 
young  business  man  who  had  been  for 
four  years  on  and  off  probation  in  Har- 
vard College  and  had  not  yet  received  his 
degree.  In  college  he  had  seemed  dull. 
He  probably  thought  he  worked,  because 
his  life  was  broken  into,  more  or  less,  by 
college  exercises,  which  he  attended  with 
some  regularity.  Now  he  is  really  work- 
ing, with  no  time  to  make  up  college  defi- 
ciencies, ready  to  admit  that  in  college 
he  hardly  knew  the  meaning  of  work, 


COLLEGE   LIFE  53 

and  to  say  simply  and  spontaneously,  "I 
made  a  fool  of  myself  in  college."  An- 
other student,  who  did  nothing  in  his 
studies,  who  spent  four  or  five  thousand 
dollars  a  year,  and  who  constantly  hired 
tutors  to  do  his  thinking,  was  finally 
expelled  because  he  got  a  substitute  to 
write  an  examination  for  him.  Home 
trouble  followed  college  trouble  ;  he  was 
thrown  on  himself  and  into  the  cold 
world  ;  and  he  became  a  man.  From 
scrubbing  street  cars,  he  was  promoted 
to  running  them  ;  from  running  them  to 
holding  a  place  of  trust  with  men  to  do 
his  orders.  "  Every  day,"  he  said,  "  I 
feel  the  need  of  what  I  threw  away  at 
college.  Do  you  think  if  I  came  back  I 
should  need  any  more  tutors ?  I'd  go 
through  quicker  than  anything,  with  no- 
body to  help  me.  What  sent  me  away 
was  the  one  dishonest  thing  in  my  life." 
The  dishonest  thing  came  about  through 
loafing. 

Even  socially,  as  I  have  intimated,  the 


54  THE   MISTAKES  OF 

loafer  seldom  or  never  wins  the  highest 
college  success.  Graduating  classes  be- 
stow their  honors  on  men  who  have 
"  done  something,"  —  athletics,  college 
journalism,  debating,  if  you  will,  not 
necessarily  hard  study  in  the  college 
course,  but  hard  and  devoted  work  in 
something,  and  work  with  an  unselfish 
desire  to  help  the  college  and  the  class. 
At  Harvard  College  in  the  class  of  1899 
all  three  marshals  graduated  with  dis- 
tinction in  their  studies.  By  the  begin- 
ning of  the  Senior  year  the  class  knows 
the  men  to  be  relied  on,  the  men  who 
are  "there,"  and  knows  that  they  are 
men  of  active  life. 

I  have  spoken  earlier  of  a  student's 
responsibility  to  some  unknown  girl  who 
is  to  be  his  wife.  What  is  his  respon- 
sibility to  a  known  girl  with  whom 
in  college  days  he  falls  in  love?  Just 
as  college  Faculties  are  blind  to  the  ef- 
fect of  social  ambition  in  students,  they 
are  blind  to  the  effect  of  sweethearts.   I 


COLLEGE   LIFE  55 

do  not  quite  know  what  they  could  do 
if  their  eyes  were  opened  ;  for  college 
rules,  happily,  must  be  independent 
of  sweethearts.  I  mean  merely  that 
scores  of  cases  in  which  students  break 
rules,  "  cut "  lectures,  disappear  for  a 
day  or  two  without  permission,  and 
do  other  things  that  look  rebellious, 
are  readily  accounted  for  by  the  disqui- 
eting influence  of  girls.  What  students 
do  (or  don't)  when  they  are  in  love  is 
a  pretty  good  test  of  their  character. 
One  drops  his  work  altogether,  and  de- 
votes what  time  he  cannot  spend  with 
the  girl  to  meditating  upon  her.  He  can 
think  of  nothing  else ;  and  accordingly 
for  her  sake  he  becomes  useless.  Another 
sets  his  teeth,  and  works  hard.  "  She  is," 
he  says  naturally  enough,  "infinitely 
above  me.  How  She  ever  can  care  for 
me,  I  do  not  know  ;  whether  She  ever 
will,  I  do  not  know ;  but  I  will  be  what 
I  can  and  do  what  I  can.  I  will  do  what- 
ever I  do  as  if  I  were  doing  it  for  Her. 


56  THE  MISTAKES  OF 

I  am  doing  it  for  Her.  If  I  succeed,  it 
will  be  through  Her ;  if  my  success  pleases 
Her,  I  shall  be  repaid." 

No  girl  worth  having  will  think  better 
of  a  man  for  shirking  his  plain  duty  in 
order  to  hang  about  her.  No  girl  likes 
a  "  quitter ; "  and  most  girls  agree  with 
the   heroine   of   Mr.  Kipling's   beautiful 

y  story,  "William  the  Conqueror,"  when 
she  says,  "  I  like  men  who  do  things." 
The  story  shows  with  profound  and  ex- 
quisite truth  how  two  persons  of  strong 
character  may  grow  into  each  other's 
love  and  into  an  understanding  of  it  by 
doing  their  separate  duties.  To  go  on, 
girl  or  no  girl,  without  excuses  small  or 
great ;  to  do  the  appointed  task  and  to 
do  it  cheerfully  amid  all  distractions,  all 
sorrows,  all  heartaches;  to  make  routine 
(not  blind  but  enlightened  routine)  your 
friend  —  thus  it  is  that  by  and  by  when 
you  meet  the  hard  blows  of  the  world 
you  can 

u  Go  labor  on ;  spend  and  be  spent." 


COLLEGE  LIFE  57 

Thus  it  is  that  you  find  the  strength 
which  is  born  of  trained  capacity  for  in- 
terest in  daily  duty. 

On  the  banks  of  the  Connecticut  is  a 
school  without  a  loafer  in  it.  The  schol- 
ars are  needy  for  the  most  part,  and  so 
grimly  in  earnest  that  only  a  printed 
regulation  restrains  them  from  getting 
up  "  before  5  A.  M."  without  permission. 
I  am  far  from  recommending  study  be- 
fore breakfast,  or  loss  of  the  night's  sleep ; 
but  I  admire  the  whole-hearted  energy 
with  which  these  boys  and  grown  men 
seize  the  opportunity  of  their  lives.  I 
admire  the  same  energy  in  athletics,  if  a 
student  will  only  remember  that  his  ath- 
letics are  for  his  college,  not  his  college 
for  his  athletics. 

One  more  caution  for  college  life  and 
for  after  life.  Do  not  let  your  ideals  get 
shopworn.  Keep  the  glory  of  your  youth. 
A  man  with  no  visions,  be  he  young  or 
old,  is  a  poor  thing.  There  is  no  place 
like  a  college  for  visions  and  ideals ;  and 


58  THE  MISTAKES  OF 

it  is  through  our  visions,  through  our 
ideals,  that  we  keep  high  our  standard 
of  character  and  life.  No  man's  charac- 
ter is  fixed  ;  and  no  responsible  man  is 
overconfident  of  his  own.  It  is  the  part 
of  every  boy  when  he  arrives  at  man- 
hood to  recognize  as  one  of  his  greatest 
dangers  the  fading  of  the  vision,  and  to 
set  himself  against  this  danger  with  all 
his  might.  It  is  only  the  man  with  ideals 
who  is  founded  on  a  rock,  and  resists  the 
rains  and  the  floods. 

A  vigorous  young  fellow,  fresh  from 
college,  went  into  a  business  house  at 
four  dollars  a  week,  and  rapidly  rose 
to  a  well-paid  and  responsible  position. 
One  day  he  received  from  a  member  of 
the  firm  an  order  to  do  something  that 
he  thought  dishonorable.  He  showed 
the  order  to  the  member  of  the  firm 
whom  he  knew  best,  and  asked  him 
what  he  thought  of  it. 

"Come  and  dine  with  me,"  said  his 
patron,  "  and  we  will  talk  it  over." 


COLLEGE   LIFE  59 

"  Excuse  me,"  said  the  young  man. 
"Any  other  day  I  should  be  glad  to 
dine  with  you  ;  but  this  matter  is  busi- 
ness." 

"  Look ! "  said  the  other.  "  Business 
is  war  ;  and  if  you  do  not  do  these  things 
in  business,  you  can't  live." 

"  I  don't  believe  it,"  said  the  young 
man.  "  If  I  did,  I  should  n't  be  here.  I 
leave  your  employ  Saturday  night ; "  — 
and,  to  the  amazement  of  the  firm,  he 
left  it  forever. 

"And  virtue's  whole  sum  is  but  know  and  dare," 

said  a  great  poet  in  one  of  his  great- 
est moments.  It  takes  a  man  with  ideals 
to  begin  all  over  again,  abandoning  the 
kind  of  work  in  which  he  has  won  con- 
spicuous success,  and  abandoning  it  be- 
cause he  finds  that  its  methods,  though 
accepted  by  business  men  generally,  are 
for  him  dishonorable. 

In  and  out  of  college  the  man  with 
ideals  helps,  so  far  as  in  him  lies,  his 


60  THE  MISTAKES  OF 

college  and  his  country.  It  is  hard  for  a 
boy  to  understand  that  in  life,  whatever 
he  does,  he  helps  to  make  or  mar  the  name 
of  his  college.  I  have  said  "  in  life  "  —  I 
may  say  also  "  in  death."  Not  long  since, 
I  saw  a  Harvard  Senior  on  what  proved 
to  be  his  death-bed.  The  people  at  the 
hospital  declared  that  they  had  never 
seen  such  pain  borne  with  such  fortitude, 
—  "  and,"  said  the  Medical  Visitor  of  the 
University,  "  he  was  through  it  all  such 
a  gentleman."  A  day  or  two  before  his 
death  an  attendant  asked  him  whether 
he  felt  some  local  pain.  "  I  did  not,"  said 
he,  "until  you  gave  me  that  medicine." 
Then  instantly  he  added,  miserably  weak 
and  suffering  as  he  was,  "  I  beg  your 
pardon.  You  know  and  I  don't.  It  may 
be  the  medicine  had  nothing  to  do  with 
my  pain."  I  believe  no  man  or  woman 
in  the  ward  saw  that  boy  die  without 
seeing  also  a  new  meaning  and  a  new 
beauty  in  the  college  whose  name  he 
bore.   As  has  often  been  said,  the  youth 


COLLEGE   LIFE  61 

who  loves  his  Alma  Mater  will  always 
ask,  not  "  What  can  she  do  for  me?"  but 
"  What  can  I  do  for  her  ?  " 

Responsibility  is  —  first,  last,  and  al- 
ways—  the  burden  of  my  song,  a  stu- 
dent's responsibility  to  home,  to  fellow 
students,  to  school,  to  college,  and  (let 
me  add  once  more)  to  the  girl  whom  he 
will  ask  some  day  to  be  his  wife.  "  Moral 
taste,"  as  Miss  Austen  calls  it,  is  no- 
thing without  moral  force.  "If,"  said  a 
college  President  to  a  Freshman  class, 
"  you  so  live  that  in  a  few  years  you  will 
be  a  fit  companion  for  an  intellectual, 
high-minded,  pure-hearted  woman,  you 
will  not  go  far  wrong."  Keep  her  in 
mind  always,  or,  if  you  are  not  imagina- 
tive enough  for  that,  remember  that  the 
lines 

"  No  spring  nor  summer's  beauty  hath  such  grace 
As  I  have  seen  in  one  autumnal  face  " 

were  written  of  a  good  man's  mother. 


COLLEGE  HONOR 

To  an  American  college  the  word  of 
all  words  is  "  truth."  "  Veritas "  is  the 
motto  of  Harvard ;  "  Lux  et  Veritas " 
the  motto  of  Yale.  On  one  of  the  new 
Harvard  gates  is  inscribed  the  com- 
mand from  the  song  in  Isaiah,  "  Open 
ye  the  gates,  that  the  righteous  nation 
which  keepeth  the  truth  may  enter  in  ; "' 
and  no  better  text  can  be  found  for  the 
sons  of  our  universities  than  "  Ye  shall 
know  the  truth,  and  the  truth  shall  make 
you  free."  To  guard  the  truth  and  to 
proclaim  the  truth  are  duties  which  the 
better  colleges  have,  on  the  whole,  hon- 
estly performed.  Now  and  then,  in  the 
fancied  opposition  of  religion  and  science, 
a  college  has  preferred  to  guard  what  it 
believes  to  be  one  kind  of  truth  rather 


64  COLLEGE   HONOR 

than  to  proclaim  another.  "  This  is  not 
a  comfortable  place  to  teach  science  in," 
said  a  young  geologist  who  had  gone 
from  Harvard  to  a  university  in  the 
West.  "  The  President  says,  '  If  any- 
body asks  questions  about  the  antiquity 
of  the  earth,  send  him  to  me.'  "  Yet,  in 
our  older  and  stronger  colleges  at  any 
rate,  fearless  investigation  and  free  and 
fearless  speech  are  the  rule,  even  at  the 
sacrifice  of  popularity  and  of  money. 

Now,  whether  truth  be  truth  of  re- 
ligion, or  of  science,  or  of  commerce, 
or  of  intercourse  among  fellow  men,  a 
college  to  stand  for  it  must  believe  in  it 
As  an  institution  of  learning,  a  college 
must  be  an  institution  of  truth ;  as  a 
school  of  character,  it  must  be  a  school 
of  integrity.  It  can  have  no  other  justi- 
fication. Yet,  outside  of  politicians  and 
horse-traders,  no  men  are  more  commonly 
charged  with  disingenuousness  than  col- 
lege presidents ;  and  in  no  respectable 
community  are  certain  kinds  of  dishon- 


COLLEGE   HONOR  65 

esty  more  readily  condoned  than  among 
college  students.  The  relation  of  college 
to  college,  whether  in  a  conference  of 
professors  or  in  a  contest  of  athletes,  is 
too  often  a  relation  of  suspicion,  if  not 
of  charge  and  countercharge.  Intercol- 
legiate discussion  of  admission  require- 
ments may  have  an  atmosphere,  not 
of  common  interest  in  education,  but  of 
rivalry  in  intercollegiate  politics ;  and, 
as  everybody  knows,  a  discussion  of 
athletics  at  one  college  frequently  shows 
an  almost  complete  want  of  confidence 
in  the  honesty  of  athletics  at  another. 
Yet  every  college  would  maintain  stead- 
ily, and  nearly  every  college  would  main- 
tain honestly,  that  it  stands  for  the  truth. 
When  I  speak  of  a  college  as  believ- 
ing in  the  truth,  I  mean  first  that  its 
President  and  Faculty  must  be  honest 
and  fearless ;  but  I  mean  more  than  this. 
I  mean  also  that  a  high  standard  of  honor 
must  be  maintained  by  its  undergradu- 
ates ;  for,  far  beyond  the  belief  of  most 


66  COLLEGE   HONOR 

men,  the  standing  of  a  college  in  the 
community  and  the  effect  of  a  college 
in  the  country  depend  on  the  personal 
character  of  the  undergraduates.  This 
personal  character  depends  in  a  measure 
on  the  straightforwardness  and  the  hu- 
man quality  of  the  college  teachers ;  but 
what  Cardinal  Newman  says  of  intel- 
lectual development  in  the  university  is 
equally  true  of  moral  development :  — 

"  When  a  multitude  of  young  men, 
keen,  open-hearted,  sympathetic,  and  ob- 
servant, as  young  men  are,  come  to- 
gether and  freely  mix  with  each  other, 
they  are  sure  to  learn  one  from  an- 
other, even  if  there  be  no  one  to  teach 
them ;  the  conversation  of  all  is  a  series 
of  lectures  to  each,  and  they  gain  for 
themselves  new  ideas  and  views,  fresh 
matter  of  thought,  and  distinct  principles 
forjudging  and  acting  day  by  day. 

"  I  am  but  saying  that  that  youthful 
community  will  constitute  a  whole,  it 


COLLEGE   HONOR  67 

will  embody  a  specific  idea,  it  will  re- 
present a  doctrine,  it  will  administer  a 
code  of  conduct,  and  it  will  furnish  prin- 
ciples of  thought  and  action.  It  will 
give  birth  to  a  living  teaching,  which  in 
the  course  of  time  will  take  the  shape  of 
a  self-perpetuating  tradition,  or  a  genius 
loci,  as  it  is  sometimes  called;  which 
haunts  the  home  where  it  has  been  born, 
and  which  imbues  and  forms,  more  or 
less,  and  one  by  one,  every  individual 
who  is  successively  brought  under  its 
shadow.  Thus  it  is  that,  independent 
of  direct  instruction  on  the  part  of  su- 
periors, there  is  a  sort  of  self-education 
in  the  academic  institutions  of  Protes- 
tant England ;  a  characteristic  tone  of 
thought,  a  recognized  standard  of  judg- 
ment, is  found  in  them,  which,  as  de- 
veloped in  the  individual  who  is  submit- 
ted to  it,  becomes  a  twofold  source  of 
strength  to  him,  both  from  the  distinct 
stamp  it  impresses  on  his  mind,  and  from 
the  bond  of  union  which  it  creates  be- 


68  COLLEGE   HONOR 

tween  him  and  others,  —  effects  which 
are  shared  by  the  authorities  of  the  place, 
for  they  themselves  have  been  educated 
in  it,  and  at  all  times  are  exposed  to  the 
influence  of  its  ethical  atmosphere." 

In  any  community  the  students  of  a 
college  make  a  tremendous  power  for 
good  or  evil ;  and  by  them  in  college, 
and  by  them  after  they  have  left  college, 
their  college  shall  be  judged.  If,  as 
Cardinal  Newman  puts  it,  the  practical 
end  of  a  university  course  is  "  training 
good  members  of  society  "  (and,  I  may 
add,  training  leaders  of  men),  nothing 
can  be  of  more  importance  in  a  univer- 
sity, and  scarcely  anything  can  be  of 
more  importance  in  a  community,  than 
the  attitude  of  undergraduates  in  ques- 
tions of  truth  and  falsehood. 

Those  who  constantly  inspect  this  at- 
titude find  much  to  encourage  them. 
The  undergraduate  standard  of  honor  for 
college  officers  is  so  sensitively  high  that 
no  one   need   despair  of  the   students* 


COLLEGE   HONOR  69 

ethical  intelligence.  No  doubt,  disin- 
genuousness  is  sometimes  believed  of  the 
wrong  man  ;  the  upright  professor  with 
a  reserved  or  forbidding  manner  may 
get  a  name  for  untrustworthiness,  while 
the  honor  of  his  less  responsible  but 
more  genial  colleague  is  unquestioned  : 
yet  the  blindness  here  is  the  blindness  of 
youthful  prejudice.  The  nature  of  dis- 
ingenuousness  is  seen  clearly  enough ; 
and  the  recognition  of  it  in  an  instructor 
condemns  him  for  all  time.  There  is 
indeed  but  one  way  in  which  a  man'  with- 
out extraordinary  personal  charm  may 
gain  and  keep  the  confidence  of  students: 
by  scrupulous  openness  in  all  his  deal- 
ings with  them,  great  or  small.  A  mo- 
ment's forgetfulness,  a  moment's  evasive- 
ness, —  even  a  moment's  appearance  of 
evasiveness,  —  may  crack  the  thin  ice 
on  which  every  college  officer  is  skating 
as  best  he  can ;  and  the  necessity  of 
keeping  the  secrets  of  less  scrupulous 
persons  may  break  it  through.     In  some 


7o  COLLEGE   HONOR 

ways  all  this  is  healthy.  A  young  fel- 
low who  sees  a  high  standard  of  truth 
for  anybody's  conduct  may  in  time  see 
it  for  his  own.  All  he  needs  is  to  dis- 
cover that  the  world  was  not  made  for 
him  only;  and  a  year  or  two  out  of 
college  should  teach  him  that.  What 
he  lacks  is  not  principle,  but  experience 
and  readjustment.  This  is  the  lack  in 
the  average  undergraduate.  It  is  only 
a  highly  exceptional  student  who  speaks 
frankly  to  all  (college  officers  included) 
of  the  lies  he  has  told  in  tight  places, 
and  who  seems  never  to  question  an 
implied  premise  that  in  tight  places  all 
men  lie. 

Another  healthy  sign  is  the  high  stan- 
dard of  honor  in  athletic  training.  This 
standard,  indeed,  may  be  cruelly  high. 
The  slightest  breach  of  training  con- 
demns a  student  in  the  eyes  of  a  whole 
college,  and  is  almost  impossible  to  live 
down.  Still  another  healthy  sign  is  the 
character  of  the  men  whom,  in  our  best 


COLLEGE   HONOR  71 

colleges,  the  undergraduates  instinctively 
choose  as  class  presidents,  as  athletic  cap- 
tains, and  in  general  as  leaders.  Grown 
men,  electing  a  President  of  the  United 
States  for  four  years,  are  not  always  so 
fortunate  as  Harvard  Freshmen,  who 
after  eight  or  ten  weeks  of  college  expe- 
rience choose  one  of  their  own  number 
for  an  office  which  he  is  practically  sure 
to  hold  throughout  the  four  college 
years.1  With  few  exceptions,  our  un- 
dergraduate leaders  are  straightforward, 
manly  fellows,  who  will  join  college 
officers  in  any  honest  partnership  for 
the  good  of  one  student  or  of  all,  and 
who  shrink  from  any  kind  of  meanness. 
Want  of  a  fine  sense  of  honor  appears 
chiefly  in  athletic  contests,  in  the  author- 
ship of  written  work,  in  excuses  for  neg- 
lect of  study,  in  the  relation  of  students 
to  the  rights  of  persons  who  are  not  stu- 

1  Class  presidents  are  usually  football  players  ; 
and,  as  a  student  once  observed,  **  When  a  feller 
plays  football,  it  does  n't  take  long  to  find  out  what 
lind  of  a  feller  he  is." 


72  COLLEGE   HONOR 

dents,  and  in  questions  of  duty  to  all  who 
are,  or  who  are  to  be,  nearest  and  dear- 
est Here  are  the  discouraging  signs; 
but  even  these  are  a  part  of  that  lop- 
sided immaturity  which  characterizes 
privileged  youth.  It  is  natural,  as  has 
been  said,  for  boys  to  grow  like  colts, 
one  end  at  a  time.  The  pity  is  that  the 
boy,  who  determines  in  a  measure  his 
own  growth,  should  be  so  late  in  devel- 
oping the  power  to  put  himself  into 
another's  place  ;  that  the  best  education 
which  the  country  can  proffer  is  so  slow 
in  teaching  to  the  chosen  youth  of  the 
nation  the  Golden  Rule,  or  even  that  part 
of  the  Golden  Rule  which  results  in 
common  honesty ;  that  the  average  col- 
lege boy,  frank  and  manly  as  he  is,  is 
honest  in  spots,  and  shows  in  his  honesty 
little  sense  of  proportion. 

Take,  for  instance,  that  part  of  college 
life  into  which  the  average  boy  throws 
himself  with  most  enthusiasm,  —  athletic 
sport,  —  and  see  how  far  our  students 


COLLEGE   HONOR  73 

have  fallen  below  the  ideal  of  honesty, 
how  far  they  still  remain  from  a  clear 
sense  of  proportion.  I  recognize  the 
place  of  strategy  in  athletics ;  and  I  by 
no  means  agree  with  the  gentleman  who 
stigmatized  a  college  catcher  as  "  up  to 
all  the  professional  tricks  "  because  "  he 
made  a  feint  of  throwing  the  ball  in  one 
direction,  and  then  threw  it  in  another : " 
yet  the  necessity  of  trusting  a  game  to 
what  the  umpire  sees  is  deplorable.  A 
whole-souled  and  straightforward  young 
athlete  told  me  once,  with  smiling  good 
humor,  that  a  football  player  in  his  own 
college  (who  had  everybody's  respect) 
owed  his  success  in  the  game  to  a  knack 
of  holding  his  opponent  in  such  a  man- 
ner as  made  his  opponent  seem  to  hold 
him.  Few  college  catchers,  I  suspect, 
systematically  resist  the  temptation  of 
pulling  down  a  "  ball "  to  make  it  look 
like  a  "  strike ; "  and  many  cultivate 
skill  in  this  sleight  of  hand  as  a  cardinal 
point  in  the  game.     Even  players  who 


74  COLLEGE   HONOR 

trip  others,  though  in  public  they  may 
be  hissed,  and  in  private  talked  about 
as  "muckers,"  are  likely  to  remain  in 
the  team,  and  in  some  colleges  may 
become  captains  (whereas  a  Freshman 
who  breaks  training  by  smoking  a  sin- 
gle cigarette  may  be  "  queered  "  for  his 
whole  college  course).  Many  ball  play- 
ers use  their  tongues  to  confound  or  ex- 
cite their  adversaries;  and  whole  armies 
of  students,  supported  by  a  well-mean- 
ing college  press,  make  a  business  of 
"  rattling "  a  rival  team  by  what  ought 
to  be  an  inspiration,  and  not  a  weapon, 
defensive  or  offensive,  — organized  cheer- 
ing. The  youth  who  plays  a  clean  game 
is  admired,  but  not  always  followed; 
and  the  doctrine  of  Mr.  Henry  L.  Hig- 
ginson  and  Mr.  R.  C.  Lehmann,  that  a 
clean  game  comes  first,  and  winning 
comes  second,  though  it  strikes  under- 
graduates as  faultless  in  theory  and  as 
endearing  in  the  men  who  preach  it,  is 
not  always  suffered,  in  a  hard  game,  to 


COLLEGE  HONOR  \         75 

interfere  with  "practical  baseball"  or 
"  practical  football,"  —  expressions  used 
among  undergraduates  much  as  "  prac- 
tical politics  "  is  used  among  men  of  the 
world. 

College  dishonesty  in  written  work  is 
hard  to  eradicate,  because  rooted  in  im- 
palpable tradition,  —  that  damaging  tra- 
dition which  exempts  students  from  the 
ordinary  rules  of  right  living,  and  re- 
gards as  venial,  or  even  as  humorous, 
acts  intrinsically  allied  to  those  of  the 
impostor,  the  forger,  and  the  thief.  It 
is  incredible  that  a  youth  of  eighteen 
should  not  see  the  dishonesty  of  hand- 
ing in  as  his  own  work,  for  his  own 
credit,  a  piece  of  writing  which  he  has 
copied  from  a  newspaper  or  from  a 
book,  or  from  the  writing  of  a  fellow 
student,  or  which  he  has  paid  another 
man  to  write  for  him.  Nobody  who 
can  get  into  college  is  so  stupid  that  he 
cannot  see  the  lie  involved.  Everybody 
sees  it  clearly  if  the  writing  is  for  a 


76  COLLEGE   HONOR 

prize,  and  if  the  fraud  deprives  a  fellow 
student  of  his  fair  chance  ;  but  if  a  youth 
has  spent  all  his  available  time  in  ath- 
letics, or  in  billiards,  or  at  clubs,  or  at 
dances,  or  at  the  theatre,  and  if  a  thesis 
is  due  the  next  day,  what  is  he  to  do? 
"A  man  must  live,"  is  a  common  cry 
of  dishonest  persons  out  of  college ;  and 
"  A  man  must  get  through,"  is  a  suffi- 
cient excuse  for  the  dishonesty  of  stu- 
dents. In  talking  with  these  dishonest 
students,  I  have  been  struck  by  two 
things :  first,  by  their  apparent  inability 
to  see  that  nobody  ever  has  to  hand  in 
anything,  and  that  handing  in  nothing 
is  infinitely  better  than  handing  in  a  dis- 
honest thing;  next,  by  their  feeling  that 
their  own  cases  are  exceptional,  since 
the  wrong  was  done  "  under  pressure," 
—  as  if  pressure  did  not  account  for  the 
offences  of  all  amateur  liars  and  forgers. 
In  many  students,  also,  there  remains 
a  trace  of  the  old  feeling  that  to  cheat 
is  one  thing,  and  to  cheat  a  teacher  is 


COLLEGE   HONOR  77 

another.  Here  is  where  generations  of 
tricky  schoolboys  have  established  a 
practice  as  hard  to  overthrow  by  logic 
as  love  of  country  or  love  of  liquor,  — 
or  anything  else,  good  or  bad,  which  de- 
pends on  custom  and  feeling  rather  than 
on  reason.  We  may  prove  that  it  is 
not  honest  to  call  a  man  we  hate  "  Dear 
Sir,"  or  to  call  ourselves  his  "  very  truly;  " 
but  custom  sanctions  it,  and  he  expects 
nothing  better  (or  worse).  We  know 
that  killing  harmless  animals  beyond 
what  can  be  used  as  food  is  wanton  de- 
struction of  life  precious  to  its  posses- 
sors ;  but  good  people  go  on  fishing  and 
shooting.  Just  so,  if  there  is  a  tradition 
that  teachers  are  fair  game,  and  if  the 
leaders  among  boys  so  regard  them, 
there  is  no  social  ostracism  for  dishon- 
esty in  written  work.  Dishonest  boys 
admit  that  an  instructor  who  should 
print  as  his  own  what  his  pupils  after- 
wards discovered  in  an  earlier  publica- 
tion  by  another  author  would  be  de- 


78  COLLEGE   HONOR 

spised  forever.  Here,  as  elsewhere,  the 
students'  standard  for  the  Faculty  is 
faultlessly  high ;  here,  as  elsewhere,  what 
they  need  is  to  open  their  eyes  to  their 
own  relative  position  among  men,  —  to 
see  that,  if  people  who  cheat  them  are 
liars,  they  themselves,  whatever  their 
social  self-complacency,  are  liars  also  if 
they  cheat  other  people.  I  would  not 
give  the  impression  that  most  students 
cheat  or  fail  to  condemn  cheating,  or  that 
colleges  are  not  making  steady  progress 
toward  a  higher  sense  of  honor  in  this 
matter  which  would  be  clear  to  a  right- 
minded  child  of  ten.  I  mean  merely 
that,  whereas  outside  of  college  (and  the 
custom  house)  the  act  of  obvious  dis- 
honesty commonly  puts  the  man  into 
bad  repute,  among  undergraduates  the 
man  often  brings  the  act  into  better 
repute  by  elevating  it  socially ;  and  that 
this  is  a  disgrace  to  an  institution  which 
counts  as  its  members  the  chosen  youth 
of  an  enlightened  country.     In  this  mat- 


COLLEGE  HONOR  79 

ter,  it  is  encouraging  to  note  the  feeling 
of  the  better  students  in  Mr.  Flandrau's 
clever  Diary  of  a  Freshman;  yet  even 
there  the  offence  carries  with  it  little  or 
nothing  of  social  condemnation.  It  is 
encouraging,  also,  to  note  the  success  of 
the  so-called  "  honor  system  "  in  schools 
and  colleges  which  have  adopted  it,  and 
the  ostracism  of  those  students  who  have 
proved  false  to  it.  For  myself,  I  cannot 
see  why  a  proctor  in  the  examination 
room  is  more  than  a  reasonable  safe- 
guard, or  why  his  presence  there  should 
be  more  offensive  than  that  of  a  police- 
man in  the  street,  —  to  a  student  honest 
and  mature.  It  is  only  boys  (whatever 
their  age)  who  take  umbrage  when  a  man 
counts  their  change,  or  verifies  their 
assertions,  or  audits  their  accounts,  or 
refuses  without  security  to  cash  their 
checks,  or  refuses  to  please  them  by  tes- 
tifying to  what  he  does  not  know.  You 
may  believe  in  a  boy  through  and 
through,  and  by  showing  your  belief  in 


80  COLLEGE   HONOR 

him  you  may  help  him  to  be  honest; 
but  your  belief  in  him  does  not  warrant 
your  official  testimony  that  he  has  suc- 
cessfully completed  a  certain  work,  if 
you  have  no  evidence  but  his  own  de- 
claration and  the  silence  of  his  fellows. 
Moreover,  so  far  as  my  experience  goes, 
the  hotbeds  of  college  cheating  are 
not  the  important  examinations  superin- 
tended by  proctors ;  they  are  written 
"  quizzes  "  in  the  crowded  classroom,  or 
themes,  theses,  forensics,  compositions  in 
foreign  languages,  mathematical  prob- 
lems, —  any  kind  of  written  work  done 
out  of  the  classroom ;  and  in  all  these 
latter  cases  the  students,  whether  they 
know  it  or  not,  are  "  put  on  their  honor." 
Theoretically,  though  in  a  doubtful  case 
I  should  always  accept  the  word  of  a 
suspected  student,  I  object  to  the  honor 
system  as  nursing  a  false  sensitiveness 
that  resents  a  kind  of  supervision  which 
everybody  must  sooner  or  later  accept, 
and  as  taking  from  the  degree  some  part 


COLLEGE   HONOR  81 

of  its  sanction.  If  a  student  vouches 
for  his  own  examinations,  why,  it  has 
been  asked,  should  he  not  sign  his  own 
diploma,  and  stand  on  his  honor  before 
the  world  as  he  has  stood  on  it  before 
the  Faculty  ?  Yet,  practically,  I  am 
told,  the  honor  system  bids  fair,  where 
it  has  been  adopted,  "to  revolutionize 
the  whole  spirit  of  undergraduate  inter- 
course with  the  Faculty."  It  is,  at  any 
rate,  as  one  of  my  correspondents  says, 
a  "  systematic  endeavor  by  undergradu- 
ates themselves  to  establish  a  much  bet- 
ter moral  code  in  relation  to  written 
work,"  and  is  therefore  "an  immense 
moral  gain  in  itself."  Besides,  I  have 
yet  to  meet  a  single  man  who  has  lived 
under  the  honor  system  (as  I  have  not) 
who  does  not  give  it,  in  spite,  perhaps, 
of  a  priori  scepticism,  his  absolute  faith. 
Sound  or  unsound,  the  honor  system  has 
in  it  signs  of  hope. 

The  notion  that    makeshifts  and  ex^- 
cuses  in  place  of  attendance  and  work 


82  COLLEGE   HONOR 

are  different  at  college  from  what  they 
are  elsewhere  is  another  aspect  of  the 
tradition  to  which  I  have  referred.  Able- 
bodied  youths  are  afflicted  with  diseases 
that  admit  all  pleasures  and  forbid  all 
duties,  and  if  questioned  closely  are  of- 
fended because  their  word  is  not  accepted 
promptly  and  in  full,  even  when  it  is 
obviously  of  little  worth.  The  dissipa- 
tion of  a  night  brings  the  headache  of  a 
morning;  and  the  student  excuses  him- 
self as  too  sick  for  college  work.  On 
the  day  before  a  ball  and  on  the  day 
after  it,  a  severe  cold  prevents  a  student 
from  attendance  at  college  exercises ;  but 
he  goes  to  the  ball.  Many  undergrad- 
uates treat  their  academic  engagements 
in  a  way  that  would  lose  them  positions 
at  any  business  house  inside  of  a  week ; 
yet  no  remorse  affects  their  appetites  or 
their  sleep.  In  this  world,  by  the  way, 
it  is  not  the  just  who  sleep;  it  is  the 
irresponsible. 

The  openness  with  which  these  worth- 


COLLEGE   HONOR  83 

less  excuses  are  offered  is  a  sign  that  the 
trouble  is  perverted  vision  rather  than 
radical  moral  obliquity.  An  ingenuous 
youth,  prevented  by  a  cold  from  going 
to  college  exercises,  stood  on  a  windy 
ball  field  one  raw  day  in  the  spring,  and, 
unabashed,  coached  his  men  before  the 
eyes  of  the  officer  whose  business  it  was 
to  call  him  to  account.  Another  insisted 
to  the  same  officer  that  a  mark  of  absence 
against  him  in  a  large  lecture  course  was 
a  mistake;  and  when  told  that  it  was 
not,  exclaimed  with  honest  warmth, 
"  Then  the  fellow  who  promised  to  sit 
in  my  seat  did  n't  do  it !  "  Both  of  these 
boys  were  blinded  by  the  tradition  which 
nearly  all  college  literature  has  fostered, 
and  which  nothing  but  eternal  vigilance 
and  constant  and  prolonged  care  can  de- 
stroy. It  is  this  tradition  which  led  a 
professor  to  say,  "  Students  who  won't 
lie  to  an  individual  will  lie  to  the  college 
office ;  it  is  a  soulless,  impersonal  thing." 
Another  aspect  of  this  same  compre- 


84  COLLEGE   HONOR 

hensive  tradition  is  the  enthusiasm  of 
some  Freshmen  for  stealing  signs.  There 
was,  indeed,  a  time  when  timid  Fresh- 
men bought  signs,  to  have  the  reputation 
of  "ragging"  them.  The  word  "rag," 
as  I  have  said  elsewhere,  is  more  local, 
more  specific,  and,  when  applied  to  our 
own  acts  or  to  those  of  our  friends,  less 
embarrassing  than  the  word  "  steal."  No 
doubt  the  college  stealer  of  signs,  whether 
youth  or  maiden,  steals  for  fun,  and  has 
not  the  same  motive  as  the  common 
thief;  yet  the  motive,  as  I  see  it,  is  no 
higher.  The  implied  general  proposition 
at  the  root  of  the  act  is  the  proposition 
that  students'  privileges  include  the  privi- 
lege of  disregarding  the  rights  of  others ; 
the  assumption  that  the  world,  of  which 
so  much  is  bestowed  on  them,  is  theirs, 
—  to  disport  themselves  in.  Sometimes 
the  stealing  takes  the  form  of  destroying 
property  (breaking  glass,  for  instance) ; 
sometimes  of  robbing  the  very  mother 
who  shelters  the  robber.     "Do  you  re- 


COLLEGE   HONOR  85 

member  what  fun  we  had  burning  that 
pile  of  lumber  in  front  of  Matthews 
Hall  ?  "  said  a  middle-aged  clergyman 
to  a  classmate.  Yet  Matthews  Hall  was 
a  generous  gift  to  the  University ;  and 
the  students  who  destroyed  the  lumber 
were  picking  the  pocket  of  a  benefac- 
tor or  of  the  Alma  Mater  herself.  De- 
struction of  property  is  often  an  attempt 
to  celebrate  athletic  success  ;  it  is,  if  the 
phrase  is  pardonable,  an  ebullition  of 
misfit  loyalty  to  the  college  whose  pro- 
perty is  sacrificed,  as  if  the  son  of  a 
successful  candidate  for  the  presidency 
of  the  United  States  should  celebrate  his 
father's  victory  by  burning  down  his  fa- 
ther's house.  Sometimes  undergraduates 
"  pinch  "  bits  of  college  property  as  tro- 
phies, just  as  modern  pilgrims  have 
shown  their  respect  for  the  Pilgrim  Fa- 
thers by  chipping  off  pieces  of  Plymouth 
Rock.  These  kinds  of  college  dishon- 
esty are  happily  lessening,  and  are  re- 
garded as  pardonable  in  Freshmen  only, 


86  COLLEGE   HONOR 

—  as  evidence  of  "freshness "  pure  and 
simple.  That  they  exist  at  all  is  not 
merely  a  scandal  to  the  good  name  of 
the  college,  but  a  menace  to  its  prosper- 
ity. The  few  foolish  boys  who  are  guilty 
of  them  stand  in  the  unthinking  public 
mind  for  the  noble  universities  which 
they  misrepresent,  until  irritated  trades- 
men and  city  governments  forget  what 
the  college  does  for  the  community,  and 
view  it  merely  as  a  rich  corporation  that 
escapes  taxes  and  fills  the  city  with  inso- 
lent and  dishonest  youth.  The  irrespon- 
sibility of  some  students  in  money  mat- 
ters, their  high-minded  indignation  if  a 
tradesman  to  whom  they  have  owed 
money  for  years  demands  it  in  a  manner 
that  does  not  meet  their  fancy,  increases 
the  irritation ;  and  incalculable  damage 
is  done. 

After  all,  the  most  serious  aspect  of 
college  dishonesty  is  the  dishonesty  of 
vice.  Many  persons  who  condemn  vice 
believe  nevertheless  that  it  belongs  with 


COLLEGE  HONOR  ]        87 

a  character  which,  though  its  strength  is 
perverted,  is  open  and  hearty ;  and  now 
and  then  this  belief  seems  justified:  but 
those  who  see  at  close  range  the  effects 
of  vice  remember  that  bound  up  with 
most  of  it  is,  and  must  be,  faithlessness 
to  father  and  mother,  and  to  the  wife 
and  children  who  are  soon  to  be.  College 
sentiment  condemns  habitual  vice.  Like 
the  sentiment  of  the  world  at  large,  it  is 
lenient  (to  men  only)  in  occasional  lapses 
from  virtue,  —  unless  a  lapse  involves 
a  breach  of  athletic  training.  Here  too 
we  mark  that  want  of  proportion  which 
characterizes  undergraduate  judgments 
of  college  honor.  The  youth  who  squan- 
ders in  vice  the  money  which  his  father, 
at  a  sacrifice,  has  sent  him  for  his  term 
bill  may  be  a  good  fellow  yet;  the 
youth  who  breaks  training  is  a  disgrace 
to  his  Alma  Mater. 

In  dwelling  on  certain  kinds  of  col- 
lege dishonesty,  I  have  not  forgotten  that 
in  some  respects  the  college  sense  of 


88  COLLEGE   HONOR 

honor  is  the  keenest  in  the  community, 
and  that  no  higher  ideal  can  be  found  on 
earth  than  in  the  best  thought  of  our 
best  universities.  What  I  have  pointed 
out  must  be  taken  as  stray  survivals  of 
an  intensely  vital  tradition,  —  survivals 
which  in  a  democracy  like  our  own  have 
no  right  to  be.  The  public  sentiment  of 
our  colleges  is  becoming,  year  by  year, 
cleaner  and  clearer-sighted.  We  move 
forward,  and  not  slowly.  What  makes  * 
some  persons  impatient  is  the  need  of 
teaching  to  the  picked  young  men  of 
America  that  a  lie  is  a  lie,  whoever  tells 
it,  and  a  theft:  a  theft,  whoever  commits 
it;  and  that  a  college  student,  though 
he  gains  more  blessings  than  his  neigh- 
bor, does  not  gain  thereby  the  right  to 
appropriate  his  neighbor's  goods.  In  our 
impatience,  we  forget  that  to  teach  an 
axiom  takes  years  and  generations  if  the 
axiom  contradicts  tradition ;  and  we  for- 
get that,  when  all  is  said,  our  under- 
graduates themselves  are  constantly  pu- 
rifying and  uplifting  college  honor. 


ROUTINE  AND   IDEALS 

The  older  I  grow,  the  more  strongly  I 
feel  that  the  best  thing  in  man  or  wo-  L/ 
man  is  being  "  there."  Physical  bravery, 
which  is  always  inspiring,  is  surprisingly 
common  ;  but  the  sure  and  steady  quality 
of  being  "  there  "  belongs  to  compara- 
tively few.  This  is  why  we  hear  on  every 
hand,  "  If  you  want  a  thing  well  done, 
do  it  yourself; "  not  because  the  man  who 
wants  it  done  is  best  able  to  do  it,  but 
because  to  many  persons  it  seems  a  hope- 
less quest  to  look  for  any  one  who  cares 
enough  for  them,  who  can  put  himself 
vigorously  enough  into  their  places,  to 
give  them  his  best,  to  give  them  intelli- 
gent, unremitting,  loyal  service  until  the 
job   is   done,  —  not  half  done,  or  nine 


90       ROUTINE  AND   IDEALS 

tenths  done,  or  ninety-nine  hundredths 
done,  but  done,  with  intelligence  and  de- 
votion in  every  nail  he  drives,  or  every 
comma  he  writes.  Some  are  reluctant, 
some  afraid  of  doing  more  than  they  are 
paid  for,  some  indifferent,  some  obli- 
gingly helpful  but  not  well  trained  and 
not  so  deeply  devoted  as  to  train  them- 
selves. I  suppose  that  in  one  sphere  of 
life  or  another  a  number  of  these  persons 
earn  what  they  get.  Yet  sometimes  I 
think  there  are  only  two  kinds  of  ser- 
vice, —  that  which  is  not  worth  having 
at  any  price,  and  that  for  which  no 
money  can  pay.  All  of  us  know  a  few 
who  give  this  latter  kind  of  service,  and 
know  what  they  are  to  us,  and  to  every 
one  with  whom  they  deal.  These  are 
the  people  who  are  "  there." 

Now  being  "there"  is  the  result  of 
three  things,  —  intelligence,  constant 
practice,  and  something  hard  to  define 
but  not  too  fancifully  called  an  ideal.  Of 
intelligence  everybody  can  see  the  need ; 


ROUTINE  AND   IDEALS       91 

but  not  everybody  knows  how  little 
quickness  of  mind  is  required.  As  Sena- 
tor Hoar  once  told  the  highest  scholars 
in  Harvard  College,  much  of  the  good 
work  in  the  world  has  been  that  of  dull 
men  who  have  done  their  best.  Moder- 
ate intelligence,  with  devotion  behind  it, 
and  with  constant  exercise  in  the  right 
direction,  has  produced  some  of  the  most 
valuable  among  men  and  women. 

The  best  thing  education  can  do  is  to 
make  moral  character  efficient  through 
mental  discipline.  Here  we  come  to  the 
need  of  training,  and  to  the  question 
whether  the  education  of  to-day  trains 
boys  and  girls  (I  do  not  say  as  it  should, 
but  as  it  might)  for  thorough,  and  re- 
sponsible, and  unselfish  work. 

Professor  A.  S.  Hill  cautions  writers 
against  "  announcing  platitudes  as  if 
they  were  oracles,"  and  against  "  apolo- 
gizing for  them  as  if  they  were  original 
sin."  I  am  in  danger  of  both  these  trans- 
gressions. In  proclaiming  that  there  is  no 


92       ROUTINE   AND   IDEALS 

education  without  hard  work,  I  may  seem 
to  proclaim  a  platitude  of  the  first  water ; 
yet  you  can  hardly  call  any  proposition 
a  platitude  if  its  acceptance  depends  on 
its  interpretation.  To  me  the  proposi- 
tion means,  nobody  can  get  an  education 
without  working  for  it ;  to  some  others 
it  appears  to  mean,  nobody  can  get  an 
education  without  other  people's  work- 
ing to  give  it  to  him,  or  even  to  make 
him  like  it  well  enough  to  take  it ;  and 
my  interpretation,  that  he  cannot  get  it 
without  working  hard  himself,  though  it 
strikes  me  as  so  obvious  that  I  am  half 
ashamed  to  mention  it,  strikes  others  as 
a  reversion  to  a  narrow  and  harsh  con- 
servatism, to  the  original  sin  of  a  time 
when  an  education  was  a  Procrustes 
bed,  which  now  strained  and  stretched 
the  mind  until  it  broke,  and  now  lopped 
every  delicate  outgrowth  of  the  soul. 

Of  all  discoveries  in  modern  education 
the  most  beautiful  is  the  recognition  of 
individual   need   and   individual   claim, 


ROUTINE   AND   IDEALS       93 

of  the  infinite  and  fascinating  variety  in 
human  capacity,  of  the  awful  responsi- 
bility for  those  who  by  the  pressure  of 
dull  routine  would  stifle  a  human  soul, 
of  the  almost  divine  mission  for  those 
who  help  a  human  soul  into  the  fulness 
of  life.  For  what  is  nearer  the  divine 
than  to  see  that  a  child  has  life,  and 
has  it  more  abundantly?  "The  past  was 
wrong,"  says  the  educator  of  to-day;  "  let 
us  right  it.  Education  has  been  dark 
and  cruel ;  let  us  make  it  bright  and 
kind."  Thus  it  comes  to  pass  that,  as 
many  a  prosperous  father  whose  boy- 
hood was  pinched  by  poverty  is  deter- 
mined that  his  son  shall  not  suffer  as  he 
himself  has  suffered,  and  throws  away 
on  him  money  wnich  he  in  turn  throws 
away  on  folly  and  on  vice,  —  as  such  a 
father  saps  a  young  man's  strength  in 
trying  to  be  generous,  so  does  many 
an  educator  of  to-day,  atoning  for  the 
cruelty  of  the  past  by  the  enervating 
luxury   of    the    present,    sap  a    child's 


94       ROUTINE  AND  IDEALS 

strength  in  trying  to  be  kind,  change  a 
Procrustes  bed  to  a  bed  of  roses.  Cruel 
as  it  is  to  assume  that  a  boy  or  a  girl 
who  is  dull  in  one  or  two  prescribed 
subjects  is  a  dunce,  it  may  be  equally 
cruel  to  watch  every  inclination  of  the 
young  mind,  and  to  bend  school  re- 
quirements to  its  desires  and  whims. 
How  many  persons  we  know  whose 
lives  and  whose  friends'  lives  are  em- 
bittered because  they  have  had  from 
childhood  their  own  way,  and  who,  if 
their  eyes  are  once  opened  to  the  sel- 
fishness of  their  position,  denounce  the 
weakness  of  those  who  in  their  child- 
hood yielded  to  them  !  Unless  we  aban- 
don as  obsolete  the  notion  that  children 
are  the  better  for  obedience,  why  should 
we  give  them  full  swing  in  the  choice 
of  a  time  for  doing  sums  or  for  learning 
to  read  ?  If  we  do  not  insist  that  a  boy 
shall  brush  his  hair  till  he  longs  to  have 
it  smooth,  and  if  then  we  brush  it  for 
him,  we  are  not  educating  him  in  either 


ROUTINE   AND    IDEALS       95 

neatness  or  efficiency ;  and  for  aught 
I  can  see,  the  analogy  holds  good.  I 
once  knew  a  boy  of  sixteen  or  seven- 
teen whose  mother  had  done  most  of 
his  reading  for  him.  His  eyes  were 
sharp  enough  for  things  he  liked  (such 
as  turtles  and  snakes) ;  but  he  had 
trained  them  so  little  in  the  alphabet  that 
in  Latin  he  was  quite  impartial  in  decid- 
ing whether  u  followed  by  t  was  ut  or 
tu.  The  effect  on  his  translation  may  be 
easily  conceived.  I  do  not  mean  that  he 
made  this  particular  mistake  many  times  ; 
I  mean  that  he  was  constantly  making 
mistakes  of  this  character  ;  that  in  general 
he  had  not  been  trained  to  observe  just 
what  were  the  letters  before  him,  or  in 
what  order  they  came.  Why  then  teach 
him  Latin?  He  was  to  be  a  scientific 
man,  and  needed  some  language  beside 
his  own  :  yet  how  could  he  learn  a  foreign 
language  ?  how  could  he  learn  his  own 
language  ?  how  could  he  learn  anything 
from  a  book  ?  how  was  he  training  him- 


96       ROUTINE   AND   IDEALS 

self  to  be  "  there  "  ?  "  Do  not  make  a 
child  read,"  some  educators  say,  "  until 
he  finds  the  need  of  reading,  and  learns 
for  his  own  pleasure.  Do  not  enfeeble 
his  mind  by  forcing  it."  "  Do  not  en- 
feeble his  mind,"  one  might  answer,  "  by 
letting  it  go  undisciplined."  If  he  begins 
late,  when  he  has  felt  the  need,  he  may 
learn  to  read  rapidly ;  but  will  he  have 
the  patience  for  those  small  accuracies 
which  form  the  basis  of  accuracy  in  later 
life,  and  which,  unless  learned  early,  are 
seldom  learned  at  all  ?  Do  not  give  the 
child  long  hours ;  do  not  take  away  the 
freshness  of  his  mind  by  pressing  him ; 
go  slowly,  but  go  thoroughly.  Teach 
him,  whatever  he  does,  to  do  it  as  well 
as  he  can.  Then  show  him  how  next 
time  he  can  do  better ;  and  when  next 
time  comes,  make  him  do  better.  How- 
ever short  the  school  hours  may  be, 
however  much  outside  of  the  school  may 
rouse  or  charm  his  mind,  make  him  feel 
that  school    standards    are   high,   that 


ROUTINE   AND   IDEALS       97 

school  work  is  to  be  done,  and  done  well. 
If  you  are  teaching  a  girl  to  sweep,  you 
do  not  let  her  sweep  the  lint  under  the 
table.  Why,  if  you  are  teaching  a  child 
to  study,  should  you  let  him  study  in  a 
slovenly  way  ?  Why,  for  instance,  should 
you  teach  him  reading  without  spelling  ? 
Get  into  him  as  early  as  you  can  a  habit 
of  thoroughness  as  an  end  in  itself,  of 
thoroughness  for  its  own  sake,  and  he 
will  soon  find  that  being  thorough  is 
interesting;  that  against  the  pain  of 
working  when  he  feels  indolent,  he  may 
match  the  pain  of  not  doing  what  ought 
to  be  done,  just  as  one  kind  of  microbe 
is  injected  to  kill  another.  When  he 
once  gets  this  habit  firmly  fixed  in  him 
(I  may  say,  when  it  has  once  fixed  itself 
upon  him),  he  may  have  all  sorts  of  in- 
tellectual freedom  and  be  safe. 

Immature  people  constantly  cry  out 
against  routine.  Yet  routine  is  an  almost 
necessary  condition  of  effective  human 
life.    An  undisciplined  genius,  like  Shel- 


98       ROUTINE   AND    IDEALS 

ley's,  inspires  now  and  then  ;  a  spirit  like 
Milton's,  as  eager  for  liberty,  and  as 
impatient  of  bondage,  yet  forced,  by  the 
man  it  animated,  to  do  his  bidding, 
which  rightly  or  wrongly  he  believed  to 
be  the  bidding  of  God,  inspires  oftener 
and  deeper.  If  routine  is  forced  upon  us, 
we  are  delivered  from  the  great  tempta- 
tion of  letting  industry  become  a  matter 
of  caprice,  and  of  waiting  for  perfect 
mental  and  physical  conditions  (Italiam 
fugientem )  before  we  settle  down  to  our 
work.  If  routine  is  not  forced  upon  us, 
we  must  force  it  upon  ourselves,  or  we 
shall  go  to  pieces.  "  Professor  X  is  a 
dry  teacher.  Shakspere  is  the  greatest 
of  poets,  and  hence  one  of  the  greatest 
inspirers  of  men.  Why  is  n't  it  better  to 
cut  Professor  X's  lecture  and  read  Shak- 
spere, —  or  even  to  read  Kipling  ?"  First 
and  obviously,  because  you  can  read 
Shakspere  at  another  time,  whereas  Pro- 
fessor X's  lecture  is  given  at  a  fixed  hour, 
is  part  of  a  course,  and  a  link  in  an  im- 


ROUTINE   AND   IDEALS       99 

portant  chain.  Next,  because  attending 
Professor  X's  lecture  is  for  the  time  be- 
ing your  business.  The  habit  of  attend- 
ing to  business  is  a  habit  you  must  form 
and  keep,  before  you  can  be  regarded 
as  "there."  Moreover  this  habit  does 
away  with  all  manner  of  time-wasting 
indecision.  If  you  take  the  hour  for 
Shakspere,  you  may  spend  half  of  it 
in  questioning  what  play  to  begin,  or 
whether  to  read  another  author  after  all, 
—  and  meantime  a  friend  drops  in.  "I 
know  a  person,"  says  Professor  James, 
"  who  will  poke  the  fire,  set  chairs  straight, 
pick  dust-specks  from  the  floor,  arrange 
his  table,  snatch  up  the  newspaper,  take 
down  any  book  which  catches  his  eye, 
trim  his  nails,  waste  the  morning  any- 
how, in  short,  and  all  without  premedi- 
tation, —  simply  because  the  one  thing 
he  ought  to  attend  to  is  the  preparation 
of  a  noon-day  lesson  in  formal  logic 
which  he  detests  —  anything  but  that!" 
It  is  astonishing  how  eagerly  men  strug- 


ioo      ROUTINE   AND   IDEALS 

gle  to  escape  from  the  training  that  pre 
pares  them  for  life,  how  they  labor  to 
convince  themselves  that  what  they  long 
to  do  is  worthier  and  nobler  than  what 
they  ought  to  do  —  and  must  do  if  they 
are  to  succeed  in  what  they  long  to  do. 
I  once  knew  a  student,  against  all  ad- 
vice, to  leave  college  in  the  middle  of 
the  Freshman  year,  because,  since  he 
was  going  into  the  ministry,  he  was 
eager  to  devote  his  whole  time  to  the 
Bible.  Later  he  saw  his  mistake,  and 
came  back.  I  knew  another  and  a  wiser 
student  who,  having  gone  into  the  min- 
istry without  a  college  education,  left  it 
for  years  of  sacrifice  in  money  and  of  the 
hardest  kind  of  work,  to  win  that  know- 
ledge of  books  and  men  without  which 
no  modern  minister  is  equipped  for  effi- 
cient service.  _The  efficient  people  are 
those  who  know  their  business  and  do  it 
promptly  and  patiently,  who  when  lei- 
sure comes  have  earned  it,  and  know 
they   have   earned   it ;   who   when   one 


ROUTINE   AND   IDEALS      101 

thing  is  done  can  turn  their  attention 
squarely  and  completely  to  the  next 
thing,  and  do  that.  The  efficient  student 
is  he  who  has  as  nearly  as  possible  a 
fixed  time  for  every  part  of  his  work ; 
who,  if  he  has  a  recitation  at  ten  and 
another  at  twelve,  knows  in  advance 
what  he  is  to  study  at  eleven.  He  has 
most  time  for  work  and  most  time  for 
unalloyed  play,  since  he  makes  use  of 
that  invaluable  friend  to  labor, — routine. 
"  Habit,"  says  the  Autocrat  of  the  Break- 
fast Table,  "  is  a  labor-saving  invention 
which  enables  a  man  to  get  along  with 
less  fuel, — that  is  all;  for  fuel  is  force, 
you  know,  just  as  much  in  the  page  I 
am  writing  for  you  as  in  the  locomo- 
tive or  the  legs  which  carry  it  to  you." 
"Habit, "  says  Professor  James, ' '  simplifies 
our  movements,  makes  them  accurate, 
and    diminishes    fatigue."     "  Man, "    he 


continues,  "  is  born  with  a  tendency  to 
do  more  things  than  he  has  ready-made 
arrangements  for  in  his  nerve-centres. 


102     ROUTINE   AND   IDEALS 

Most  of  the  performances  of  other  animals 
are  automatic.  But  in  him  the  number  of 
them  is  so  enormous  that  most  of  them 
must  be  the  fruit  of  painful  study.  If 
practice  did  not  make  perfect,  nor  habit 
economize  the  expense  of  nervous  and 
muscular  energy,  he  would  be  in  a  sorry 
plight.  As  Dr.  Maudsley  says :  '  If  an 
act  became  no  easier  after  being  done 
several  times,  if  the  careful  direction  of 
consciousness  were  necessary  to  its  ac- 
complishment on  each  occasion,  it  is 
evident  that  the  whole  activity  of  a  life- 
time might  be  confined  to  one  or  two 
deeds — that  no  progress  could  take  place 
in  development.  A  man  might  be  oc- 
cupied all  day  in  dressing  and  undress- 
ing himself ;  the  attitude  of  his  body 
would  absorb  all  his  attention  and  en- 
ergy ;  the  washing  of  his  hands  or  the 
fastening  of  a  button  would  be  as  diffi- 
cult to  him  on  each  occasion  as  to  the 
child  on  its  first  trial ;  and  he  would, 
furthermore,  be  completely  exhausted  by 


ROUTINE   AND   IDEALS     103 

his  exertions.'  "  "  The  great  thing,  then, 
in  all  education,"  says  Professor  James, 
"is  to  make  our  nervous  system  our  ally 
instead  of  our  enemy.  It  is  to  fund  and 
capitalize  our  acquisitions,  and  live  at 
ease  upon  the  interest  of  the  fund.  For 
this  we  must  make  automatic  and  habit- 
ual, as  early  as  possible,  as  many  useful 
actions  as  we  can,  and  guard  against 
the  growing  into  ways  that  are  likely 
to  be  disadvantageous  to  us,  as  we 
should  guard  against  the  plague.  The 
more  of  the  details  of  our  daily  life  we 
can  hand  over  to  the  effortless  custody 
of  automatism,  the  more  our  higher 
powers  of  mind  will  be  set  free  for  their 
own  proper  work.  There  is  no  more 
miserable  human  being  than  one  in 
whom  nothing  is  habitual  but  indeci- 
sion. .  .  .  Full  half  the  time  of  such  a 
man  goes  to  the  deciding,  or  regretting,  of 
matters  which  ought  to  be  so  ingrained 
in  him  as  practically  not  to  exist  for  his 
consciousness  at  all.     If  there  be  such 


104     ROUTINE   AND   IDEALS 

daily  duties  not  yet  ingrained  in  any  one 
of  my  readers,  let  him  begin  this  very 
hour  to  set  the  matter  right." 

All  this  shows  the  true  meaning  of 
thoroughness.  I  have  heard  it  said  that 
thoroughness  in  education  is  precisely 
what  we  do  not  want,  since  thorough 
work  becomes  mechanical  work,  and 
robs  the  student  of  that  creative  joy 
which  should  accompany  every  exercise 
of  the  mind.  Yet  it  is  the  "  effortless 
custody  of  automatism"  in  the  lower 
things  that  frees  the  mind  for  creative 
joy  in  the  higher.  The  pianist  who 
cannot  through  long  practice  commit 
to  routine  all  the  ordinary  movements  of 
the  fingers  on  the  keys  can  never  play 
the  music  of  Schumann  or  of  Beethoven. 
Sometimes  I  think  that  our  happiness 
depends  chiefly  on  our  cheerful  accept- 
ance of  routine,  on  our  refusal  to  as- 
sume, as  many  do,  that  daily  work  and 
daily  duty  are  a  kind  of  slavery.  If 
we  can    learn  to  think  of  routine  as 


ROUTINE  AND   IDEALS     105 

the  best  economy,  we  shall  not  despise 
it.  People  call  it  benumbing ;  and  so  it 
is  if  we  do  not  understand  it :  but  if  we 
understand  that  through  it  we  can  do 
more  work  in  less  time,  and  have  more 
time  left  for  the  expansion  of  our  souls, 
that  through  it  we  cultivate  the  habit 
which  makes  people  know^  we  can  be 
counted  on,  we  shall  cease  to  say  hard 
things  of  it  Even  in  those  whose  lives 
are  narrowly  circumscribed,  we  see  the 
splendid  courage  and  fidelity  which 
come  with  faithful  routine.  The  longer 
I  live,  the  more  I  admire  as  a  class  the 
women  who  fill  small  positions  in  New 
England  public  schools,  the  typical 
schoolmistresses  or  "  schoolmarms "  of 
our  more  Puritanical  towns  and  villages. 
Their  notions  of  English  grammar  are 
as  inflexible  as  their  notions  of  duty ; 
like  Overbury's  Pedant,  they  "  dare  not 
think  a  thought  that  the  nominative 
case  governs  not  the  verb  ;  "  their  theo- 
logy may  be  as  narrow  as  their  philology ; 


106     ROUTINE  AND   IDEALS 

they  have  little  primnesses  that  make  us 
smile :  but  they  have  the  hearts  of  hero- 
ines. Pitifully  paid,  often  with  others  to 
support,  often  subject  to  ignorant  and 
wrong-headed  committees,  and  obliged 
against  every  instinct  to  adopt  new 
methods  when  education  is  periodically 
overhauled,  often  with  little  physical 
health,  and  living  on  courage  and  "  wire," 
with  few  social  diversions  higher  than 
the  Sunday  School  picnic,  and  few  hopes 
of  rest  in  this  world  higher  than  the  Home 
for  Aged  Women,  they  are  at  their  posts 
day  by  day,  week  by  week,  year  by  year, 
because  they  are,  as  Milton  said  of 
Cromwell, 

"Guided  by  faith  and  matchless  fortitude." 

What  is  more  inspiring  than  the  men  and 
women  who  are  "  there,"  and  "  there " 
not  in  the  high  and  ambitious  moments 
of  life,  but  on  the  obscure  dead  levels 
that  take  the  heart  out  of  any  one 
who  does  not  see  the  glory  of  common 
things  ? 


ROUTINE   AND   IDEALS     107 

These  schoolmistresses,  though  they 
may  not  know  it,  illustrate  the  absolute 
necessity  of  routine  for  steadily  effective 
living.  In  little  things  they  may  show 
the  hard  and  wooden  quality  of  a  mind 
that  works  in  the  treadmill  day  after 
day,  and  may  thus  give  a  handle  to  those 
critics  who  scoff  at  routine ;  but  if  their 
small  accuracies  seem  pretentiously  lit- 
tle, their  devotion  is  unpretentiously 
great.  Through  habit,  supported  by  un- 
yielding conscience,  they  have  forced 
upon  themselves  a  routine  without  which 
they  could  not  live. 

A  boy  when  he  meets  with  loss  or 
grief  or  disaster,  or  even  when  he  feels 
the  excitement  of  joyful  expectation,  is 
likely  to  stop  work  altogether.  He  has 
"no  heart  for  it,"  he  says;  he  "cannot 
do  it."  A  young  man  crossed  in  love,  a 
young  woman  who  loses  father,  mother, 
or  bosom  friend  —  these  may  pine  and 
fret,  and  suffer  the  sorrow  for  days,  or 
weeks,  or   months,  to  stop  their  lives, 


108     ROUTINE   AND   IDEALS 

may  cease  to  live  except  as  burdens  to 
themselves  and  others ;  but,  young-  or 
old,  a  trained  man  or  woman  whose 
heart  and  will  are  strong  keeps  on. 
There  is  always  somebody  or  something 
to  work  for  ;  and  while  there  is,  life  must 
be,  and  shall  become,  worth  living.  "  In 
summer  or  winter,"  said  the  proud  ad- 
vertisement of  an  old  steamboat  line, 
"  In  summer  or  winter,  in  storm  or  calm, 
the  Commonwealth  and  the  Plymouth 
Rock  invariably  make  the  passage;" 
and  this  should  be  the  truth  about  you 
and  me. 

The  use  of  routine  to  make  a  sad  life 
endurable  was  once  brought  clearly  be- 
fore my  mind  as  I  watched  the  polar 
bears  in  the  Zoological  Garden  at  Cen- 
tral Park.  In  a  kind  of  grotto  cut  in  a 
hillside,  two  polar  bears  were  caged. 
Two  sides  of  the  cage  were  of  sheer 
rock ;  two  were  of  iron,  one  separating 
the  polar  bears  from  the  grizzly  bears, 


ROUTINE  AND   IDEALS     109 

and  one  separating  them  from  the  spec- 
tators in  the  Park.  The  floor  of  the 
grotto  between  the  steep  rock  and  the 
pool  of  water  which  represented  the  Arc- 
tic Ocean  was  narrow ;  but  on  it  one  of 
the  bears  was  exercising  with  a  rhythmic 
motion  strange  and  inexpressibly  sad. 
He  moved  from  the  centre  of  the  grotto 
two  or  three  steps  toward  the  rock, 
swung  his  head  wide  and  low  three 
times  to  the  right  and  three  times  to  the 
left,  with  a  sweep  like  that  of  a  scythe, 
stepped  back  two  or  three  paces,  com- 
pleting a  sort  of  ellipse,  stepped  forward 
again,  swung  his  head  right  and  left 
again  three  times,  precisely  as  before,  — 
then  back,  then  forward,  then  swinging, 
on  and  on  and  on.  At  intervals,  whether 
with  numerical  precision  or  not  I  cannot 
say,  he  broke  his  circuit,  walked  to  the 
iron  fence  between  him  and  the  grizzly 
bears,  walked  back,  and  began  once 
more  the  round  of  motions  devised,  as  it 
seemed,  to  save  him  from  madness  or 


no     ROUTINE  AND   IDEALS 

from  death.  Three  times  that  day  I  vis- 
ited him ;  and  always  I  found  him  at  his 
self  -  appointed  task,  —  forward,  swing, 
back,  forward,  swing,  back,  on  and  on 
and  on.  The  rocky  bottom  of  his  den 
was  worn  into  holes  where,  always  in  the 
same  spots,  he  set  his  feet  in  this  forlorn 
attempt  to  put  a  saving  routine  into  a 
hopeless  life.  Near  him,  in  a  narrow 
house  with  a  litde  window-like  door,  a 
small  brown  bear  moved  round  and 
round,  casting  one  quick,  sharp  glance 
at  the  outer  world  in  every  round,  as  he 
walked  briskly  by  the  door;  and  in  a 
neighboring  house  a  hyena  strode  angrily 
back  and  forth,  and  back  and  forth,  and 
back  and  forth  again.  Here  were  captive 
animals  finding  in  routine  the  nearest 
possible  approach  to  an  enrichment  of 
their  lives. 

The  reaction  against  routine  in  mod- 
ern education,  the  notion  that  children 
should  be  pleased  with  a  variety  of  sub- 
jects made  easy  and  interesting,  rather 


ROUTINE  AND   IDEALS      in 

than  drilled  in  a  few,  and  roused  to  in- 
terest themselves  in  these  few  and  in 
the  thoroughness  that  drill  demands,  ac- 
counts, I  believe,  in  large  measure  for 
the  collapse  of  many  a  student's  will  be- 
fore any  subject  that  requires  hard  math- 
ematical thinking.  In  Harvard  College 
an  elementary  course  in  philosophy  used 
to  begin  with  lectures  on  psychology, 
which  fascinated  the  class ;  but  "  oh, 
the  heavy  change"  when  in  the  second 
half-year  psychology  gave  place  to  logic  I 
The  text -book,  "Jevons's  Elementary 
Lessons,"  is  so  simple  that  any  youth  of 
fair  intelligence  who  will  come  to  close 
quarters  with  it  should  master  it  with  ease; 
yet  more  than  one  student,  apparently  in 
full  health  and  intelligence,  declared  that 
he  could  make  nothing  of  it,  that  it  was 
too  hard  for  him  altogether.  He  asked 
to  leave  the  course,  to  count  the  first  half 
of  it  toward  his  degree,  and  to  take  up 
something  more  congenial.  These  boys, 
through  the  labor-saving  appliances  of 


112     ROUTINE  AND   IDEALS 

their  schools,  supplemented  by  their 
choice  of  lecture  courses  in  college,  had 
lost,  or  what  is  almost  as  bad,  thought 
they  had  lost,  the  power  of  close  logical 
application.  Worst  of  all,  they  had  lost 
the  stimulus  of  surmounting  difficulties. 
How  were  they  training  themselves  to 
be  "  there  "  ? 

I  constantly  meet  students  who  declare 
that  they  cannot  learn  geometry.  This 
commonly  means  that  they  hate  geome- 
try so  cordially  as  never  to  give  it  their 
close  attention.  There  may  be  some  in- 
telligent persons  who  cannot  learn  geo- 
metry; but  the  vast  majority  of  those 
who  think  they  cannot  learn  it,  learn  it 
if  they  have  to. 

"  I  hold  very  strongly,"  says  Cardinal 
Newman,  "  that  the  first  step  in  intellec- 
tual training  is  to  impress  upon  a  boy's 
mind  the  idea  of  science,  method,  order, 
principle,  and  system ;  of  rule  and  excep- 
tion, of  richness  and  harmony.  This  is 
commonly  and  excellently  done  by  mak- 


ROUTINE   AND   IDEALS     113 

ing  him  begin  with  Grammar ;  nor  can 
too  great  accuracy,  or  minuteness  and 
subtlety  of  teaching  be  used  towards  him, 
as  his  faculties  expand,  with  this  simple 
purpose.  Hence  it  is  that  critical  scholar- 
ship is  so  important  a  discipline  for  him 
when  he  is  leaving  school  for  the  Uni- 
versity. A  second  science  is  the  Mathe- 
matics :  this  should  follow  Grammar,  still 
with  the  same  object,  viz.,  to  give  him  a 
conception  of  development  and  arrange- 
ment from  and  around  a  common  centre. 
Hence  it  is  that  Chronology  and  Geo- 
graphy are  so  necessary  for  him,  when 
he  reads  History,  which  is  otherwise  lit- 
tle better  than  a  story-book.  Hence,  too, 
Metrical  Composition,  when  he  reads 
Poetry  ;  in  order  to  stimulate  his  powers 
into  action  in  every  practicable  way,  and 
to  prevent  a  merely  passive  reception  of 
images  and  ideas  which  in  that  case  are 
likely  to  pass  out  of  the  mind  as  soon  as 
they  have  entered  it.  Let  him  once  gain 
this  habit  of  method,  of  starting  from 


114     ROUTINE  AND   IDEALS 

fixed  points,  of  making  his  ground  good 
as  he  goes,  of  distinguishing  what  he 
knows  from  what  he  does  not  know,  and 
I  conceive  he  will  be  gradually  initiated 
into  the  largest  and  truest  philosophical 
views,  and  will  feel  nothing  but  impa- 
tience and  disgust  at  the  random  theories 
and  imposing  sophistries  and  dashing 
paradoxes,  which  carry  away  half-formed 
and  superficial  intellects." 

The  child  who  learns  to  do  small  things 
well  when  he  is  small  gets  the  best  train- 
ing for  doing  big  things  well  when  he  is 
big.  He  lifts  the  calf  every  day ;  and 
behold,  he  has  lifted  the  cow  !  Wherever 
you  go,  you  meet,  not  merely  people  who 
scamp  their  work,  but  people  who  do  not 
know  the  difference  between  a  good  job 
and  a  bad  one.  "  My  great  difficulty," 
says  the  master  of  a  large  private  school, 
"  is  to  find  teachers  who  know  anything, 
or  who  seem  as  if  they  had  ever  seen 
anybody  that  knew  anything.  They  have 
plenty  of  'educational    progress'   and 


ROUTINE   AND   IDEALS     115 

'  educational  theory  ; '  but  they  don't 
know  anything."  After  all,  why  should 
they  know  anything  ?  They  have  a  good 
deal  of  more  or  less  accurate  information, 
such  as  people  get  who  have  studied  what 
came  easiest  and  seemed  at  the  time  most 
interesting,  and  have  let  the  rest  go. 
Then,  with  a  little  pedagogy  superadded, 
they  have  been  turned  loose  to  hand 
down  their  principles  to  others..  "  The 
Austrian  ballet"  [Australian  ballot],  a 
New  York  schoolgirl  wrote  in  an  exam- 
ination book,  "  was  introduced  into  this 
country  by  Cleveland  to  corrupt  the  peo- 
ple and  keep  it  secret."  The  state  of  mind 
evinced  by  this  sentence  has  been  too 
common  in  school  children  under  any 
system  of  learning ;  but  I  believe  we  do 
less  to  clear  it  now  than  when  we  paid 
more  attention  to  those  fundamental 
principles  which  tend  to  promote  accu- 
racy in  thought  and  in  expression. 

I  have  said  elsewhere  —  and  I  believe 
it  with  all  my  might  —  that  one  reason 


ii6     ROUTINE   AND   IDEALS 

for  the  hold  of  athletic  sport  on  our 
schools  and  colleges  is  its  awakening  in 
many  boys  their  first,  or  almost  their 
first,  ambition  to  do  something  as  well 
as  it  can  be  done,  and  the  recognition  of 
severe  routine  as  a  means  to  that  end. 
In  football  they  are  judged  by  an  in- 
numerable jury  of  their  peers.  Failure 
is  public  disgrace  ;  success,  if  decently 
bought,  is  glory.  "  Jack,"  said  a  great 
football  player  to  a  shiftless  student 
whom  he  was  trying  to  look  after  mor- 
ally, "  did  you  ever  do  anything  as  well 
as  you  could?"  "No,  Tom,"  said  the 
other,  "  I  don't  believe  I  ever  did."  The 
amateur  athlete  is  held  up  to  his  best 
by  the  immediate,  certain,  and  wide- 
spread fame  of  good  playing,  and  the 
equally  prompt  and  notorious  shame  of 
bad  playing.  He  is  held  up,  further,  by 
the  conviction  that  what  he  is  doing  is 
for  his  college  or  for  his  school.  Never 
again,  unless  he  holds  public  office,  will 
such  a  searchlight  be  turned  on  him; 


ROUTINE   AND   IDEALS     117 

and  never  again  will  so  many  persons 
see  what  he  does  or  fails  to  do.  As  a  re- 
sult, a  thoroughly  trained  football  player, 
meeting  the  supreme  test,  may  find  him- 
self lifted  up  by  the  inspiration  of  the 
moment,  of  the  crowd,  of  the  cheering, 
and  of  college  patriotism,  so  that  —  as 
some  one  has  put  it  —  he  plays  better 
than  he  knows  how.  In  a  few  instances 
every  man  in  a  team  plays  better  than 
he  knows  how. 

Older  people  can  hardly  appreciate 
the  stimulus  to  every  power  of  mind  and 
body  in  a  great  athletic  contest.  Here 
is  work  in  which  youth  itself  is  an  ad- 
vantage, in  which  the  highest  honor 
may  be  won  by  a  young  man  who  has 
missed  all  earlier  opportunities  for  doing 
anything  as  well  as  he  knew  how ;  here 
is  a  fresh  chance  to  show  of  what  stuff 
—  mental  and  physical  —  he  is  made, 
and  a  cause  that  appeals  to  youth  so 
strongly  as  to  make  obstacles  springs  of 
courage.   Here  is  something  that  rouses 


n8     ROUTINE  AND   IDEALS 

a  young  man's  powers  as  the  elective 
system  in  study  is  designed  to  do,  yet 
does  not  require  that  basis  of  intellectual 
accuracy  which  is  essential  to  success  in 
study.  Here,  also,  is  something  in  which 
a  young  man  who  can  succeed  knows 
that  success  may  mean  an  opening  for 
the  work  of  his  life.  Thousands  of  men 
actually  see  his  success  with  their  own 
eyes ;  thousands  more  hear  of  it.  If  on 
graduation  he  applies  for  work,  he  is 
not  the  unknown  quantity  that  a  young 
graduate  usually  is.  He  has  already 
been  tried  in  times  of  stress  and  found 
not  wanting.  If,  as  sometimes  happens, 
he  has  shown,  not  merely  that  he  is  al- 
ways to  be  counted  on,  but  that  in  the 
thick  of  things  he  is  inspired  and  inspir- 
ing, he  has  marked  himself  as  a  leader 
of  men.  Besides,  no  man  can  thoroughly 
succeed  in  football  who  plays  for  himself 
alone.  There  are  few  more  searching 
tests  of  men's  motives  and  spirit.  This  is 
why  class  officers  chosen  from  football 


ROUTINE   AND   IDEALS     119 

players  are  almost  invariably  good  men. 
On  the  gridiron  field  their  classmates 
learn  who  have  self-control,  courage,  en- 
durance, minds  quick  in  emergencies, 
devotion  to  class  and  college,  and  who 
play  to  the  grand  stand,  and  unless  they 
can  be  spectacular  are  of  no  use. 

I  dwell  on  football  because  its  hold  on 
a  college  is  often  misunderstood  by  per- 
sons who  think  of  it  merely  as  a  brutal, 
tricky,  and  sadly  exaggerated  pastime, 
and  not,  in  spite  of  its  evils,  as  a  test  of 
generalship,  physical  and  moral  prow- 
ess, quickness  of  body  and  mind ;  and 
because  it  is  a  good  illustration  of  a  vis- 
ible and  practical  purpose  (crossing  the 
enemy's  goal  line)  fired  by  an  ideal  (the 
honor  and  glory  of  a  college).  The  full 
strength  of  college  feeling  does  not  come 
to  a  man  until  years  after  his  gradua- 
tion ;  but  he  knows  something  of  it  when 
he  "  lines  up  "  beside  his  old  school  en- 
emy against  an  old  school  friend,  who, 
at  the  parting  of  the  ways,  has  chosen 


120     ROUTINE  AND   IDEALS 

another  Alma  Mater.  As  years  go  by, 
his  love  of  college  becomes  second  only 
to  his  love  of  country.  The  college  be- 
comes more  and  more  a  human  being, 
for  whom  it  is  an  honor  to  work,  to  live, 
and  to  die.  Indeed,  every  man  who  has 
once  taken  her  name  is  in  some  sense 
bound  to  work,  to  live,  and  to  die  for 
her.  In  business,  in  politics,  in  religion, 
in  everything,  it  is  she  who  cheers  him, 
as  he  struggles  to  hold  his  standard 
high.  Much  modern  teaching  dwells  on 
the  development  of  self ;  yet  he  who  de- 
votes himself  to  the  rounding  out  of  his 
own  powers  may  be  good  for  nothing, 
whereas  he  who  devotes  himself  to  what 
he  loves  better  than  himself,  and  thus 
abandons  much  that  looks  good  for  him 
because  he  must  do  something  else  with 
his  whole  heart,  —  must  do  it  often  in  a 
romantic  and  what  may  seem  a  reckless 
loyalty,  —  such  a  man  achieves  a  power 
beyond  the  reach  of  the  professional  self- 
developer.    Education  is  not  in  a  high 


ROUTINE  AND   IDEALS      121 

sense  practical  unless  it  has  an  ideal  in 
it  and  round  about  it.  I  know  the  com- 
mon talk  that  colleges  unfit  their  stu- 
dents for  those  daily  duties  which  might 
chafe  a  mind  that  has  tasted  intellectual 
joy.  No  college  can  make  everybody 
unselfish  and  wise ;  yet  among  human 
powers  for  unselfishness  and  wisdom  I 
know  none  like  that  of  a  healthy  college. 
If  by  a  practical  life  we  mean  such  a 
life  of  service  as  is  not  merely  endured 
but  enjoyed,  lived  with  enthusiasm,  then 
surely  the  most  unpractical  people  in  the 
world  are  the  men  and  women  who  put 
away  their  ideals  as  childish  things. 
"  The  light  of  a  whole  life  dies 
When  love  is  done," 

a  poet  says ;  and  though  he  means  the 
love  between  man  and  woman,  his  verse 
would  be  more  deeply  true  if  "love" 
might  take  on  the  wider  meaning  of 
that  faith  and  energy  and  courage  and 
enthusiasm  which  light  the  dim  and  tor- 
tuous way.   With  this,  no  life  while  sense 


122     ROUTINE   AND   IDEALS 

remains  can  be  crushed  by  drudgery  or 
woe.  Without  it,  a  life  of  drudgery  is  a 
life  of  Egyptian  darkness.  "  Where  there 
is  no  vision  the  people  perish." 

The  college  helps  her  sons  and  daugh- 
ters to  keep  alive  the  vision.  She  dif- 
fuses about  them  what  Mr.  Justice 
Holmes  has  called  "an  aroma  of  high 
feeling,  not  to  be  found  or  lost  in  science 
or  Greek,  —  not  to  be  fixed,  yet  all-per- 
vading." She  shows,  in  steady  bright- 
ness to  the  best,  in  flashing  glimpses  to 
the  worst,  the  vision  without  which  there 
is  no  life.  She  teaches  her  children  not 
to  shun  drudgery  but  to  do  the  work, 
and  in  doing  it  to  know  its  higher  end. 
The  question  whether  a  thing  is  ever- 
lasting truth  or  commonplace  is  often 
a  question  whether  it  has  or  has  not  a 
light  in  it.  Homer,  even  when  he  tells 
us  how  Telemachus  put  on  his  clothes, 
is  not  commonplace.  "  I  suppose,"  says 
Ruskin,  "  the  passage  in  the  Iliad  which 
on  the  whole  has  excited  most  admira- 


ROUTINE  AND   IDEALS     123 

tion  is  that  which  describes  a  wife's  sor- 
row at  parting  from  her  husband,  and  a 
child's  fright  at  its  father's  helmet."  It 
is  education  that  helps  us  see,  as  Homer 
saw,  the  high  meaning  of  the  common- 
place in  every  part  of  life,  the  beauty 
whereby  the  drudgery  of  daily  life  be- 
comes transfigured.  It  is  education  that 
teaches  us  not  to  measure  the  best  things 
in  the  world  by  money.  It  is  educated 
men  and  women,  beyond  all  others,  who 
throw  into  their  work  that  eager  sacri- 
fice of  love  for  which  no  money  can  pay, 
and  to  which,  when  work  cries  out  to 
be  done,  no  task  is  too  forbidding,  no 
hours  are  too  long.  The  practical  life  is 
the  life  of  steady,  persistent,  intelligent, 
courageous  work,  widening  its  horizon 
as  the  worker  grows  in  knowledge,  and, 
by  doing  well  what  lies  before  him,  fits 
himself  for  harder  and  higher  tasks.  But 
the  practical  life  of  educated  men  and 
women  is,  or  should  be,  even  more  than 
this.   It  makes,  or  should  make,  every 


124     ROUTINE  AND  IDEALS 

task  the  expression  of  an  enlightened 
spirit.  There  were  in  the  nineteenth 
century. few  lives  more  practical  than 
those  of  the  "  heroic  boys  "  who,  in  the 
exquisite  words  of  their  old  comrade, 
"gave  freely  and  eagerly  all  that  they 
had  or  hoped  for  to  their  country  and 
to  their  fellow-men  in  the  hour  of  great 
need."  In  such  a  practical  life  as  every 
man  or  woman  ought  to  lead,  such  a 
practical  life  as  educated  men  and  wo- 
men are  bound  to  lead  or  be  false  to 
their  trust,  it  is  the  vision  that  abides 
and  commands. 


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